Mix 3 g NaCl, 17 g agar, and 2. Cover mouth of flask with aluminium foil. Autoclave for 50 min. Swirl to mix well. Using sterile procedures, dispense the NGM solution into petri plates using a peristaltic pump.
Leave plates at room temperature for days before use to allow for detection of contaminants, and to allow excess moisture to evaporate. Plates stored in an air-tight container at room temperature will be usable for several weeks. It may be desirable to use or well microtiter plates when using expensive drugs or screening a large number of individual animals.
For well plates, use 1. To do this, packed E. One volume of the E. Care should be taken to prevent worms from crawling between wells; only one strain of C. Using sterile technique, apply approximately 0. If desired, the drop can be spread using the pipet tip or a glass rod.
Spreading will create a larger lawn, which can aid in visualizing the worms. Take care not to spread the lawn all the way to the edges of the plate; keep the lawn in the center.
The worms tend to spend most of the time in the bacteria. If the lawn extends to the edges of the plate the worms may crawl up the sides of the plate, dry out and die. Allow the E. Seeded plates stored in an air-tight container will remain usable for weeks.
Standard 10X eyepieces and objectives which range from 0. Several methods are used for transferring C. A quick and convenient method is "chunking", wherein a sterilized scalpel or spatula is used to move a chunk of agar from an old plate to a fresh plate. There will usually be hundreds of worms in the chunk of agar. The worms will crawl out of the chunk and spread out onto the bacterial lawn of the new plate.
This method works well for transferring worms that have burrowed into the agar or are difficult to pick individually such as on a starved plate. The chunking method is fine for transferring homozygous stocks but it is not advisable if the population is heterozygous or if a stock must be maintained by mating. The sterilized filter paper is gently set upon the petri plate, where it absorbs moisture and picks up worms.
The filter paper is then touched to a fresh NGM plate where the worms are deposited. Discard the filter paper after use. This method is also fine for transferring homozygous stocks but it is not advisable if the population is heterozygous or must be maintained by mating. A third method is to pick single animals with a worm picker. A worm picker can be made by mounting a 1-inch piece of 32 gauge platinum wire into either the tip of a Pasture pipet or in a bacteriological loop holder.
Platinum wire heats and cools quickly and can be flamed often between transfers to avoid contaminating the worm stocks. The end of the wire, used for picking up worms, can be flattened slightly with a hammer and then filed with an emery cloth to remove sharp edges; sharp points can poke holes in the worms and kill them or make holes in the agar.
The tip of the wire can be fashioned to your liking. Some people prefer a flattened end, while others prefer a slight bend that forms a hook. It takes a bit of experience with a worm picker to avoid poking holes in the agar. Worms crawl into the holes, making it difficult to see or pick them. To pick a worm identified under the dissecting microscope, slowly lower the tip of the wire and gently swipe the tip at the side of the worm and lift up.
Another method is to get a blob of E. The worm will stick to the bacteria. Several animals at a time can be picked by this method, although worms left too long on the pick will desiccate and die. To put a picked worm on a fresh plate, slowly lower the tip of the worm picker, gently touch the surface of the agar, and hold it there to allow the worm to crawl off of the picker. The frequency that you need to transfer your worms depends on their genotype, the temperature at which you grow them, and what you plan to do with them.
Heterozygotes and mating stocks should be transferred every generations; it is easier to transfer them if you do it before the plates have become starved. If you want to transfer individual animals from a starved plate you may find it easier to first chunk the plate and then to pick individual animals after they have crawled out of the chunk and into the bacterial lawn.
If the animals are in the dauer stage see Genetic mapping and manipulation-Introduction and basics you may need to wait a day before picking; the worms will develop out of the dauer stage, and the phenotypes can be scored.
When transferring heterozygous stocks that are not well balanced it is best to transfer just one worm to each new plate. This allows you to score the progeny of the transferred worm and confirm that you did indeed transfer a heterozygote. To maintain mating stocks stocks with both males and hermaphrodites transfer adult males and young adult hermaphrodites per plate. You may allow homozygous stocks to starve for several weeks between transfers.
To prevent a plate from drying out, wrap it with a strip of Parafilm. Alternatively, you may want to transfer your stocks every days so that you have a source of animals at every stage of development. This variation in growth periods can be useful when planning experiments. Take note of specific growth requirements e. Stock plates do not need to be stored in a covered container. They will eventually dry out, but this won't be a problem if you transfer animals before the plates reach that condition.
If you do store your plates in a covered container be sure to watch for signs of high humidity. Although rare, it is possible for worms to crawl or be carried in a drop of water from one plate to another in such conditions, resulting in the mixing of strains. When pouring or seeding plates, or when transferring worms, it is best to keep the amount of time the cover is removed at a minimum.
This cuts down on contamination. If you have mold on a plate, carefully wrap the plate with a strip of Parafilm and dispose of it. Do not take the cover off of a contaminated plate or you risk contaminating other plates. If you must transfer from a contaminated plate, see the section below on Cleaning contaminated stocks. Label the bottom of the petri plate with the strain name and date. Don't label only the cover, as it may accidentally be separated from the bottom. Discarded plates should be placed in a plastic bag and autoclaved.
Large quantities of C. Liquid cultures of C. It is often best to grow just one generation of worms in liquid before the worms are harvested. When growing worms for more than one generation, overcrowding can often lead to dauer formation despite the presence of food.
Overnight cultures of E. It is a good idea to have a large amount of concentrated E. The amount of food needed will depend on the starting inoculum of worms and the length of time the worms are grown. As a point of reference, you can grow a ml batch of liquid culture by inoculating with worms recovered from 4 large mm petri plates and growing for days.
Initially, packed E. The worm culture is monitored, and additional E. Protocol 2. Preparation of liquid culture of C. S Basal [5. Sterilize by autoclaving. Trace metals solution [1.
Store in the dark. Add components using sterile technique; do not autoclave. Inoculate the S Medium with a concentrated E. Wash each of 4 large plates of C. Use fairly vigorous shaking so that the culture is well oxygenated. Cultures should be monitored by checking a drop of the culture under the microscope.
If the food supply is depleted the solution is no longer visibly cloudy add more concentrated E. When there are many adult animals in each drop, the culture is ready to be harvested.
This is usually on the 4 th or 5 th day. Young larvae may take longer than 2 min to pellet. The worms harvested from growth in liquid culture are usually longer and thinner than those grown on petri plates, and tend to hold their eggs.
The number of adults, larvae and eggs obtained depends on the strain of worms used, the amount of bacteria provided and the length of time the culture is grown. Freshly cleared cultures will yield worms equal to half the weight of the bacteria used Lewis and Fleming, Occasionally, C. It is easy to rid your worm stocks of contaminants. Most contaminants will not hurt the worms. In fact, the worms like to climb some fungal hyphae and sway back and forth!
But it is much easier to score phenotypes and do transfers when your stocks are clean. Mold can be removed by chunking Protocol 3 and serially transferring, allowing the worms to crawl away from the contaminant.
Bacterial contaminants and yeast are easily removed by treating with a hypochlorite solution, which will kill the contaminant and all worms not protected by the egg shell. This can be done using an entire plate that is contaminated Protocol 4 , or it can be done quickly using a single hermaphrodite Protocol 5. Protocol 3. Removing mold contaminants from C. Sterilize a scalpel or spatula in a flame and remove a chunk of the agar from the contaminated plate. Remove the cover of the contaminated plate only as long as necessary.
Place the chunk of agar at the edge of a seeded clean plate. Allow the worms to crawl out of the chunk and across the E. Once the worms have reached the other side of the plate, pick individual animals with a worm picker or take another chunk using a flamed scalpel or spatula and place it on the edge of another clean plate.
Protocol 4. Egg prep: Removing bacterial or yeast contaminants from C. Use contaminated C. Pipet the H 2 O across the plate several times to loosen worms and eggs that are stuck in the bacteria.
Collect the liquid in a sterile 5 ml conical centrifuge tube with cap. Add H 2 O to total 3. Mix 0. Make this solution fresh just before use! Add to the centrifuge tube with the worms. Shake well or vortex the tube for a few seconds. Use a Pasteur pipet to transfer the eggs in the remaining 0. The next day the eggs will have hatched and the larvae will have crawled into the E. Transfer the hatched larvae to a clean NGM plate seeded with a lawn. Protocol 5. Egg prep in a drop: Small scale method for removing bacterial or yeast contaminants.
Make a mixture of 1N NaOH:bleach. Put a drop of this solution on the edge of a clean NGM plate seeded with an E. Put several gravid hermaphrodites in the drop. The solution will kill the contaminants and hermaphrodites but will soak into the plate before the embryos hatch. The next day the larvae will have crawled into the E. Transfer them to a clean NGM plate seeded with an E. Protocol 6. Obtaining synchronous cultures of C.
Aspirate most of the liquid from the flask to remove any dauer pheromone accumulated during starvation. Transfer the remaining liquid to a 50 ml sterile conical centrifuge tube and spin for at least 2 min at x g to pellet the worms. Transfer the worms to ml of S Basal inoculated with concentrated E.
Moniter by checking a drop of the culture under the microscope. Add more food as necessary. If only a small number of synchronized animals are needed, the eggs can be added to a thin layer of M9 Buffer in a 60 mm petri plate and allowed to grow overnight. The starved L1 animals can then be placed on seeded NGM petri plates, and synchronous growth will begin with the reintroduction of food.
Animals should be monitored using the microscope and harvested at the desired stages. A population of dauer animals can be obtained by adding dauer-inducing pheromone to the liquid culture Vanfleteren, Dauers can also be obtained by allowing a liquid culture to grow for several days after the culture is cleared of bacteria. Freshly starved young larvae L1-L2 stage survive freezing best. Well-fed animals, adults, eggs and dauers do not survive well.
It is best to use several plates of worms that have just exhausted the E. The CGC uses two solutions for freezing C. Using good sterile technique, add 0. Transfer to a graduated cylinder and bring up to final volume. Skip to content. Zamanian Lab Docs. Zamanian Lab C. Note: use autoclaved 2 L water bottles mLs to dilute to 1x for use in assays. Autoclave for 1 hr. Store in mL aliquots.
Store at RT for up to 2 weeks. S Medium Make each component below according to the recipe. Stir with heat until completely solubilized.
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