My lab has been having trouble making thick bacterial lawns. In a previous lab I routinely could put 2000 L1s on a 10cm seeded plate and they would still have food by the time they got to adulthood. Try as I might, I can’t seem to do that anymore. I’m not sure what the difference could be. Does anyone have any advice for getting thicker lawns?
We always measure the OD(600) of each over-night OP50 LB culture and concentrate bacteria by centrifugation. With a concentrated pellet of 80 mL culture (OD~3) we cultivate up to 50.000 synchronized worms on one large dish.