I observed a wierd thing during my experiments.
I was planning to do some lifespan experiments in liquid culture. I wanted to prevent the reproduction of worms by adding 50 ug/ml FUDR and I wanted to use DMSO treated worms (0,2% DMSO) as a negative control.
However I noticed that the combination of FUDR and DMSO seem to be toxic to the worms (more than 50% of the population dies overnight). Worms in FUDR alone are OK, worms in DMSO alone are OK as well.
I should also highlight that those experiments were performed in liquid S complete - I didn´t see anything like that on NGM plates with similar concentration of DMSO and FUDR.
Also, some strains seem to be more sensitive to this than others - most sensitive seem to be the strains that are also sensitive to oxidative stress.
I was wondering if anyone had the same problem. Thanks for the answer.
I’m not a fan of liquid lifespan, but try halving the concentration of FUdR.
For what it’s worth, I’m on Team anti-FUdR. Anne Hart just published a lovely study on FUdR and how it activates various stress pathways. There’s also a nice table in there compiling previous observations of the effect of FUdR on lifespan.
Your culprit could be the trace metals solution in the S media.
I know everyone always wants to use S media for liquid culture even though this media seems to have been optimized for worms growing in culture flasks.
Life in the bottom of a multi-well plate is probably different.
If you want to change the media to see if toxicity changes I recommend trying NGM- salts only (no nutrients) with trace cholesterol. Add concentrated food washed in the NGM-salts. Worms can grow indefinitely this way.