I’m sure that this exists somewhere already, but I can’t seem to find anything about it…
I am growing up C. elegans mutants in liquid culture, but seem to get a lot of problems with fungus growing in the medium. I’ve repeated this a few times, making progressively more effort to keep everything properly sterile, but I keep seeming to end up with fluffy whitish balls in the culture.
I’m using S-Medium. Are there any broad-spectrum fungicides that I can safely add to the culture that won’t damage the nematodes? Alternately, any other suggestions to combat this?
I used Invitrogen’s antibiotic/antimycotic when I grew worms in liquid culture. Note that there is an effect on the worms in either Nystatin or this product, but as long as you grow all your worms the same (control v experimental) you should be able to ignore this effect.
I’ve been searching this forum and the internet at large for anyone detailing the actual effects of Nystatin on worms, but sadly to no avail. Can anyone give me more information on this? I’m trying to start up an experiment which would involve long-term liquid culturing of worms, so it is relevant in this case.
I used amphotericin b (trade name is Fungizone, I think) once or twice in liquid cultures. It didn’t seem to have an effect on growth of the guys, and they seemed more or less normal. It certainly prevented a nasty fungal contamination I kept getting. Give it a try first and see if it affects your phenotype.