Has anyone tried transferring worms with a pre-wetted piece of filter paper/sticky tape, etc? i.e. in lieu of chunking or picking, placing a piece of paper on the
surface with worms and bacteria, and having worms crawl onto it, then placing it on the fresh plate where the worms will crawl off. Would appreciate any
advice on the best type of filter paper/tape and yield.
er…perhaps this is an obvious question…but why would you want to do that instead of sticking (pardon the pun) with chunking or picking. Have you inherited a bulk supply of filter paper?
Steve
I am trying to develop a pretty specific technique for one of our protocols which would speed up the transfer of different worm stages. Wormbook lists filter paper as one of the main ways of bulk transferring, so I wondered if anyone’s tried it or has experience with this.
Hey, a specific technique that speeds up transferring worms at specific stages of development…I hope you will tell us all about it in the WBG?
I would just go ahead and try it out. I can imagine that the most likely filter paper used (as it is commonly found in labs) is Whatman’s No.1, but you could try different brands.
I guess the main points to watch are that the filter paper is sterile + dry before use, the plates are not too dry and that the filter paper actually soaks through before it is lifted to the new plate (so that the worms don’t die by drying out too much). But hey, this isn’t rocket science…
The strips mentioned in the Wormbook methods chapter could also be small circles (Sigma do 1" circles, 100 for about €/$/5 can’t find the pound sign) for ‘targeted’ transfer (sounds good eh?).
Steve