Total RNA Isolation from Planarian Tissues.

Isolation of high-quality and nondegraded RNA is a prerequisite for many modern molecular biology applications. A variety of RNA extraction products and protocols are available for the standard model organisms, yet species-specific peculiarities of less well studied organisms often require specific protocol adaptations. Here we describe a robust RNA extraction protocol for planarians that is widely used in the community. The protocol combines tissue homogenization in TRIzol with phenol-chloroform extraction and subsequent purification over commercial columns. The purified RNA can be used for many downstream applications, such as cDNA synthesis and next-generation sequencing (NGS, RNA-seq).