Question: What all is involved in growing fungas and extracing RNA?

Shannon Fullbrook answered on 15 Nov 2017:

So culturing (growing) of fungal species is done in my lab by the following method

1. frozen pellets which contain the fungus are spread out on a media ( normally a jelly-like substance in a petri dish) which contains all the nutrients the fungus need to grow e.g. some kind of carbohydrate like sugars
2. These petri dishes containing the fungal pellets are then incubated at 25, 30 or 37 degrees, depending on what temperature the specific fungus likes to grow at
3. The petri dishes can be incubated for days or weeks depending on what fungus your growing.

Also since fungi need oxygen to grow, we sometimes grow them in broth (which is basically a liquid form of the jelly-like substance we put in the petri dish) and put them on a shaker while incubating them. The shaker creates bubbles in the broth which increases the oxygen and allows them to grow.

To extract RNA we need to brake open the fungal cells and get rid of all the other things in the cell like proteins , lipids and DNA, we do this with special kits in our lab, once that is done we put the RNA into water and make sure its frozen at -80 degrees very quickly because RNA is very unstable and can break down very easily at room temperature!