Extraction of Small RNAs by Titanium Dioxide Nanofibers

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small RNAs, that bind to mRNA targets and regulate their translation. Functional study of miRNAs and exploration of their utility as disease markers require miRNA extraction from biological samples, which contain large amounts of interfering compounds for downstream RNA identification and quantification. The most common extraction methods employ either silica columns or TRIzol reagent, but these approaches afford low recovery for small RNAs, possibly due to their short strand lengths. Here, we describe the fabrication of titanium dioxide nanofibers and the optimal extraction conditions to improve miRNA recovery from biological buffers, cell lysate, and serum.