Dear all,
I am a college undergrad thesis student working on C. elegans dauer larvae. I have found a way to separate C. elegans worms from the dauer, but I have not successfully found a way to separate dead dauer larvae (dauer that do not come out of the dauer state) from living ones. Is there a known reference or protocol for this type of experiment?
One option would be to use Nitex filters of a specific mesh size and allow the viable animals to crawl through the mesh while leaving the dead behind. We used 35 micron mesh to separate gravid hermaphrodites (diameter >40 microns) from adult males prior to sperm isolation. The protocol is from Klass and Hirsh (1981) and can also be found in Methods in Molecular Biology v. 351 (K. Strange, ed.) or Methods in Cell Biology v. 48 (Shakes & Epstein, eds.).
Good luck,
Harold Smith