I too work on picornaviruses. We have a lab protocol for extracting vRNA from infected cell lysates: acid phenol (selects against DNA) TE-equilibrated phenol phenol/chloroform chloroform EtOH ppt. for 60' The resulatant vRNA works well for RT-PCR. Hope this is of some help and that you don't mind phenol (I wasn't sure) -- Lee R. Martin LRM at zeus.ahabs.wisc.edu