Relationship of different bacterial strain food source qualities on Caenorhabditis elegans
Ali, Arwa ; Baragary, Ashley
Citations
Abstract
In most research regarding the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) the food source used to feed the worms is Escherichia coli (E. coli) not for the actual quality of the bacterium but because of its abundance and accessibility in the laboratory setting. The C. elegans have a preference for higher quality food sources which can lead to better growth and movement of the C. elegans. The use of different bacterial strains that vary based on quality, from high to low, would explain the movement of the C. elegans, and could be used to test the willingness of the worms to travel for a better food source. The smaller microbial size of the bacteria would promote easy uptake for the C. elegans which could also lead to greater movement to high quality source. The three bacterial strains used in this study are as follows; Escherichia coli (E. coli) which is described as medium quality, DA1877 Comamonas which is described as high quality, and DA1880 Bacillus megaterium which is described as low quality. The C. elegans will be kept in maintenance on circular agar plates E. coli as their standard food source. There will be three different bacterial strains that will be placed on the trial square agar plates sized 100mm x 100mm. These trial agar plates will contain two of the three different bacterial strains to test movement between the two strains based on their quality. On each of the trial agar plates, the two different bacterial strains will differ in quality to determine the willingness of the C. elegans to move to the “higher” food source. For example, the agar plate will contain high-quality food source on one end and low-quality on the other. These trials will be in replicates of three. The agar plates will contain three L4 stage C. elegans on the plate after the resource has been added and will be incubated at 20°C for 120 hoURS and then counted to understand the distribution and population abundance of the C. elegans.