I am brand new to the C. elegans research area, and I am trying to study the influence of a specified chemical on the lifespan of C. elegans. Is there any possible way to treat the C. elegans (which is cultured on the agar plate) with this specified chemical except including this chemical in the agar? Thanks for your suggestion.
I just did a small scale metabolite screen and ended up mixing the compounds in with the agar just prior to pouring plates - this worked beautifully for me. I made little micro-batches of NGM + chemical in 50mL tubes, using 1.33 X concentrated NGM so that I had enough volume to add the chemical, then just topped it off with water. I also tried adding chemicals on top of the agar after it had solidified, and this also worked fine in my hands. The problem with adding compounds in small volumes to the top of the plates is that you don't really know the final concentration that the worms are exposed to. No matter how you add the chemical, if you see an effect, just know that a reviewer will probably ask you to do the same experiment with killed bacteria - at least that's what happened to me. In that case, UV -killing the bacteria in solution prior to adding them to the plates works great - worms were perfectly happy on the UV-killed bugs.
- Badges
- Science topic