Hi All,
I am just trying to get as much information as I can about the study of C. elegans and I feel on here would also be a veritable avenue to improve my knowledge about the worms. So what am interested in is to know why exactly do we see the need to carryout lifespan analysis on the worms. I mean we put 5-FUDR to prevent procreation form the worms and as in my own case we also put some concentrations of toxin to start monitoring how many worms survive overtime. I feel we should expect these worms to reduce in populaion with what we have exposed them to quite alright, but aside from this why exactly do we carry out the lifespan experiments? Thank you for your help in answering this question of mine. And Happy independence day to everyone.
maybe it’s that the caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet…but I’m somewhat surprised by your question given you appear to be undertaking lifespan analysis already?
So you probably know that the use of 5-FUDR is to stop the data getting messy with lots of newcomers on the plate interfering with you counting how many of the original worms are still around after a defined period of time?
You probably already know that all the worms exposed to your ‘toxin’ don’t keel over ‘en mass’ at 12 noon on the third day…it’s a stochastic process?
You have probably also realised that worm strain A might not be as suceptible to the toxin as worm strain B, but that needs to be quantified right?
So Drs. Kaplan and Meier came to our rescue and developed a way of analysing survival.
But it’s good to have these things clear in your mind and you could always run these questions by your supervisor and ask her/him why they are doing survival analysis…
So…where’s my caffeine…
Oh yeah, to my colleagues across the water…have a good one today!
Steve
Not everyone uses FUdR for lifespan analysis.
What Steve said, all of it.