Originally posted on WormAtlas by “hasa63”, on July 26, 2006
hey !
does anyone know how to stain the worms while they are alive with out fixation ?
i wanna track them in a platewhile they are alive
thanx
Originally posted on WormAtlas by “hall”, on July 31, 2006
One easy way does not involve an internal stain, but let’s you place an external dot to mark a spot on the worm’s body. Shawn Lockery and Steven Augustine (at U Oregon) are mixing black pigment with vaseline to make the spotting substance. Just touch a worm with a tiny dot of the mix, and it is marked clearly and the spot stays on for plenty of time to do live imaging of the worm’s body motion. Your microscope need only detect the black spot, not the whole worm in order to compute the activity record, times of start, stop, reverse, speed of transit, etc.
I believe that the Lockery lab has also been writing software to analyse this data.
Shawn has told me previously that many sources of black pigment will work; artist’s paint, xerox toner, printer toner, etc.
Worth a try
DHH
dear,
if worms are feeding normally you can stain the worm by feeding acrylic red dye which is non toxic to c.elegans and it stains pharynx so you can easily track c.elegans
kisan