I’m a high school student starting my first research project with C. elegans. I’m trying to dissolve a chemical to treat my worms. I’ve noticed that different groups have either used M9, K, or S buffer. What are the differences and would you recommend that I use any of the three if I want to leave my worms in suspension for an hour.
worms will be perfectly happy in M9 for an hour (it has the salts they need/isotonic solution for worms), i would agitate the solution thought, i.e. keep water moving by using a shaker on low or something. You can just tape your tube to the shaker.
Another question you should ask yourself is: “is my drug water soluble” if it is M9 should be fine. Otherwise it may not go into solution effectively.
Best of luck
Cheers,
HH
I’m using BPS and was planning on dissolving it in ethanol. Would I be able to dissolve my BPS ethanol solution in M9? If not, do you have suggestions for alternative buffers?
Yes, BPS can be dissolved in ethanol or DMSO. Stocks of up to 0.5M or even 1M can be made that way. It can then be added to M9 at the desired final concentration. We routinely used as low as 100uM and as high as 500uM in our publications (see https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1006223 ).