The fundamental process for isolating nucleic acid from starting material of Boom method consists of the following 4 steps (See Fig. 1).
(d) Separating the bonded nucleic acids <br />
Pure nucleic acids are eluted into buffer by decreasing the concentration of chaotropic substance.
Nucleic acids present in the washed (and preferably dried) silica-nucleic
acid complexes is eluted into chosen elution buffer such as TE buffer,
aqua bidest, and so on. The selection of the elution buffer is
co-determined by the contemplated use of the isolated nucleic acid.
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In this way, pure nucleic acids are isolated from the starting material.
By altering the experimental conditions, especially the composition of reagents (chaotropic substance, wash buffer, etc) more specific isolation can be achieved. For example, some compositions of reagents are suitable for obtaining long double-stranded DNA or short single-stranded RNA.
A wide variety of starting biological material are available, including whole blood, blood serum, buffy coat, urine, feces, cerebrospinal fluid, sperm, saliva, tissues, cell cultures, food products, or vaccines. Optimization of procedure is required to maximize yield of nucleic acids from different starting materials or different types of nucleic acids (eg long/short, DNA/RNA, linear/circular, double-stranded/single-stranded).
Today, the assay characterized by using silica coated magnetic beads seems to be the most common. Therefore, in this article, "silica beads" are intended to mean silica coated magnetic beads unless stated otherwise.