In this article, the authors describe an interconnected set of relatively simple laboratory experiments in which students determine the RNA content of yeast cells and use agarose gel electrophoresis to separate and analyze the major species of cellular RNA. This set of experiments focuses on RNAs from the yeast "Saccharomyces cerevisiae", a unicellular budding microorganism that has served as a model of cellular and molecular processes in eukaryotes. The general goals of these experiments are to emphasize the importance of RNA in cell biology and to provide practice in basic biochemical and molecular analysis. (Contains 6 tables and 3 figures.)