C.elegans undergraduate lab

Model Organism: Worms Scientific Discussion
1

I am teaching an upper year developmental biology course and would like to include at least one C.elegans oriented lab. I may try to develop a simple lab involving an RNAi feeding experiment for the course, looking at Muv and Egl phenotypes, for example.

I was wondering if the community has any other suggestions or have developed worm labs that they would be willing to share, or is there a resource available such that I could find this sort of information? Any help would be appreciated.

-terry

2

Have you looked at WormClassroom.org?

3

I have been doing a quarter long undergraduate cell biology lab course which is mostly worm-centric, as well as doing a worm module in another professor’s genetics lab. (I hope to post some of my labs to wormclassroom.org over the winter break.) Something that works very well is to do bacterial feeding RNAi on GFP-labeled worms. Of course, for this you need a fluorescence scope. But if it is available, the worms look really cool and the students really enjoy the lab. I have not settled on the perfect strain, but am trying various rescuing GFP translational fusions and GFP RNAi - the worms that are losing the green are also mutant for the fused protein. That way, different students can use different worm strains and the same RNAi bacteria. Email me (duerr@ohio.edu) if you would like a list of the strains that I have used

Janet Duerr
Ohio University

4

Hi,

If you need large quantity of worm plates in the future, please consider my company LabExpress: http://www.lab-express.com. We offer worm plates at very low price. When I was a postdoc in a worm lab, I experienced lots of problems with worm plates. By offering pre-made ones, I am hoping to reduce the waste and human resource each worm lab spends on it and centralization and automation will eventually pay off.

Sheila

5

Hello;

Daryl Hurd published a nice example in CBE Life Sciences Education last summer:

http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/7/2/210

However, this is more of a full-semester model, rather than a single module.

Helen

6

I developed a nice neuro experiment with Dennis Liu many years ago. It illustrates the difference between pre-synaptic and post-synaptic. Use egl-1 (absent HSNs) and egl-2(defective muscle excitation). Both fail to lay eggs. One can dump a serotonin solution (10 mg/ml) right on the plates. egl-1 will lay eggs, egl-2 will not. It’s easy to see many eggs floating around when the drug works on egl-1.