Im setting up a lifespan assay (im new in this thing) and I noticed that during the first days I loose a considerable amount of my initial population (~50%) because worms crawl up the walls of plates. I can see the dead dessicated bodies on the walls of the plate. I’m using large 90 mm plates with a very low density of worms with plenty of E. coli, so they are obviously not starving. I know this shouldnt be normally a problem, but given the conditions of my experiment and strains I would really like to avoid this issue. Has anyone come with a solution before or have some idea how to solve this? I was thinking of something like adding a thin layer of vaseline with a brush around the perimeter of the plate, since that could maybe stop worm’s curiosity
you could try spreading the bacterial lawn a little tighter so that it doesn’t reach the edges of the plate. Or if that doesn’t do the trick, you could add a ring of high molarity sucrose solution around the edge of the plate to produce a barrier that the worms wont cross.
ya, i heard about the palmitic acid to form a ring barrier, but i was wondering if palmitic acid in ethanol will have any impact onto lifespan analysis?