In our studies on the role of -galactosidase in fruit softening, significant difficulty, was encountered in our attempts to extract RNA from persimmon(Diospyros kaki L. cv. Fuyu) fruit due to astringency and tannin content. Initial, unsuccessful RNA extractions involved methods using guanidinium isothiocyanate/CsCl with and without polyvinylpyrrolidone(PVP), phenol/sodium lauryl sulfate(SDS), guanidinium hydrochloride, as well as polysomal RNA purification method that used 0.2 M Tris-HCI (pH 9.0) containing KCI, Mg-acetate, EDTA, -mercaptoethanol, and sucrose. A method was devised which employed treatment of fruit with CO2 gas to diminish astringency prior to RNA extraction, followed by extraction of tissue powders with Proteinase K extraction buffer containing PVP and ascorbate at an alkaline pH. This procedure resulted in the removal of tannins and other polyphenolics and extraction of relatively large amount of high-quality RNA suitable for cDNA library construction and polymerase chain reaction(PCR). Futhermore, the procedure does not use the toxic and corrosive chemical guanidinium isothiocyanate or require ultracentrifugation.

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