Culture and Assay of Large-Scale Mixed-Stage <em>Caenorhabditis elegans</em> Populations

Abstract

Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) has been and remains a valuable model organism to study developmental biology, aging, neurobiology, and genetics. The large body of work on C. elegans makes it an ideal candidate to integrate into largepopulation, whole-animal studies to dissect the complex biological components and their relationships with another organism. In order to use C. elegans in collaborativeomics research, a method is needed to generate large populations of animals where a single sample can be split and assayed across diverse platforms for comparative analyses.Here, a method to culture and collect an abundant mixed-stage C. elegans population on a large-scale culture plate (LSCP) and subsequent phenotypic data is presented. This pipeline yields sufficient numbers of animals to collect phenotypic and population data, along with any data needed for -omics experiments (i.e., genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics). In addition, the LSCP method requires minimal manipulation to the animals themselves, less user preparation time, provides tight environmental control, and ensures that handling of each sample is consistent throughout the study for overall reproducibility. Lastly, methods to document population size and population distribution of C. elegans life stages in a given LSCP are presented.

Role ofugtgenes in detoxification and glycosylation of 1-hydroxy phenazine (1-HP) inCaenorhabditis elegans

“…LSCPs were poured according to previously described protocols. [37] Poured plates were seeded with the HTS115 strain of E. coli prepared in K-media at a concentration of 0.5 g mL -1 bacteria generated according to the IBAT method. [38] Worms were chunked onto the LSCPs and then grown for seven to ten days, depending on the strain, before being washed with M9 for subsequent experiments.…”