RT-PCR from VERY limited quantity of tissue sample - Need suggestion on RNA isolation and RT kits to maximize cDNA yield (Jun/16/2008 )

Hi everyone,

I will be doing RT-PCR on some patient tumor samples of which I can only obtain a single 10um section.

Can someone suggest a good combination of RNA purification kit and RT kit to get the highest cDNA yield?

I searched around and am sort of fond of Zymo's Mini RNA Isolation Kit (I or II...probably II to prevent overloading column and wasting RNA).

Invitrogen's SSIII 1st strand is what I usually use for RT and the protocol usually asks for 1ug of RNA. But Invitrogen's SSIII brochure from their website seems to advertise it as pg imput. So hopefully I can use an input of around 10ng max.

Thanks!