We thank the CGC Minnesota (Madison, USA, NIH - P40 OD010440) for providing worm strains and OP50 and Pr. Hinrich Schulenburg (CAU, Kiel, Germany) for providing all the environmental microbial isolates depicted here. This work was funded by a UKRI-BBSRC grant to AB (BB/S017127/1). JM is funded by a Lancaster University FHM PhD scholarship.

The authors have nothing to disclose.

C. elegans offers many advantages for rapidly screening multiple experimental parameters at once, owing to its small size, transparency, fast development, short lifespan, inexpensiveness, and ease of handling. Its considerably simpler genome, body plan, nervous system, gut, and microbiome, yet complex and similar enough to humans, make it a powerful preclinical model, where mechanistic insight can be gained while testing for bioactive efficacy or toxicity. As interest is growing in developing microbial intervent...

The human body harbors an estimated 10-100 trillion live microbial cells (bacteria, archaea fungi), which are primarily found in the gut, skin, and mucosal environments1. In a healthy state, these provide benefits to their host, including vitamin production, maturation of the immune system, stimulation of innate and adaptive immune responses to pathogens, regulation of fat metabolism, modulation of stress responses, and more, with an impact on growth and development, disease onset, and ageing2,3,4,5. The gut microbiota also evolves considerably throughout life. The most drastic evolution occurs during infancy and early childhood6, but significant changes also occur with age, including a decrease in Bifidobacterium abundance and an increase in Clostridium, Lactobacillus, Enterobacteriaceae, and Enterococcus species7. Lifestyle can further alter gut microbial composition leading to dysbiosis (loss of beneficial bacteria, overgrowth of opportunistic bacteria), resulting in various pathologies such as inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes, and obesity5, but also contributing to Alzheimer&#39;s and Parkinson&#39;s diseases8,9,10,11.
This realization has critically contributed to refining the concept of the gut-brain axis (GBA), where interactions between gut physiology (now including the microbes within it) and the nervous system are considered the main regulator of animal metabolism and physiological functions12. However, the precise role of microbiota in gut-brain signaling and the associated mechanisms of action are far from being fully understood13. With gut microbiota being a key determinant of healthy aging, how bacteria modulate the aging process has become a subject of intense research and controversy6,14,15.
With the demonstration that the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans hosts a bonafide gut microbiota dominated-as in other species-by Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Actinobacteria16,17,18,19,20, its rapid rise as an experimental platform to study host-gut commensal interactions21,22,23,24,25,26 has significantly expanded our investigative arsenal26,27,28,29. In particular, high-throughput experimental approaches available for C. elegans to study gene-diet, gene-drug, gene-pathogen, etc. interactions, can be adapted to rapidly explore how bacterial isolates and cocktails impact C. elegans health and aging.
The present protocol describes an experimental pipeline to screen at once arrays of bacterial isolates or mixtures set in multiwell plates for effects on C. elegans stress resistance as a proxy for health, which can be used to identify probiotics. It details how to grow large worm populations and handle bacterial arrays in 96- and 384-well plate formats before processing worms for automated stress resistance analysis using a fluorescence plate reader (Figure 1). The approach is based on label-free automated survival assays (LFASS)30 that exploit the phenomenon of death fluorescence31, whereby dying worms produce a burst of blue fluorescence that can be used to pinpoint the time of death. Blue fluorescence is emitted by glucosyl esters of anthranilic acid stored in C. elegans gut granules (a type of lysosome-related organelle), which burst when a necrotic cascade is triggered in the worm gut upon death31.
<img alt="Figure 1" class="xfigimg" src="/files/ftp_upload/63860/63860fig01.jpg" /> 
Figure 1: Experimental workflow for high-throughput screening of bacterial isolates with impact on C. elegans resistance to stress. (A) Timeline for worm and bacterial maintenance and assay setup. (B) 96-well bacterial plate array setup and handling. (C) 384-well worm plate setup. <a href="https://www.jove.com/files/ftp_upload/63860/63860fig01large.jpg" target="_blank">Please click here to view a larger version of this figure.</a>

<table><tbody><tr><td>10 cm diameter plates (Non-vented)</td><td>Fisher Scientific</td><td>10720052</td><td>Venting is not necessary for bacterial cultures</td></tr><tr><td>15 cm diameter plates (Vented)</td><td>Fisher Scientific</td><td>168381</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>384-well black, transparent flat bottom plates</td><td>Corning</td><td>3712 or 3762</td><td>Not essential to be sterile for fast stress assays</td></tr><tr><td>6 cm diameter plates (Vented)</td><td>Fisher Scientific</td><td>150288</td><td>Venting is necessary for worm cultures to avoid hypoxia</td></tr><tr><td>96-well transparent plates (Biolite)</td><td>Thermo</td><td>130188</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Agar (&amp;lt;4% ash)</td><td>Sigma-Aldrich</td><td>102218041</td><td>Good quality agar is important for the structural integrity of the culture media, to avoid worm burrowing</td></tr><tr><td>Agarose</td><td>Fisher Scientific</td><td>BP1356</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Avanti Centrifuge J-26 XP</td><td>Beckman coulter</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Bleach</td><td>Honeywell</td><td>425044</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Calcium chloride</td><td>Sigma-Aldrich</td><td>C5080</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Centrifuge 5415 R</td><td>Eppendorf</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Centrifuge 5810 R</td><td>Eppendorf</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Cholesterol</td><td>Sigma-Aldrich</td><td>C8667</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>LB agar</td><td>Difco</td><td>240110</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>LB broth</td><td>Invitrogen</td><td>12795084</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>LoBind tips</td><td>VWR</td><td>732-1488</td><td>Lo-bind reduce worm loss during transfers</td></tr><tr><td>LoBind tubes</td><td>Eppendorf</td><td>22431081</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Magnesium sulfate</td><td>Fisher Scientific</td><td>M/1100/53</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Plate reader- infinite M nano+</td><td>Tecan</td><td></td><td>Monochromator setup enables fluorescence tuning but adequate filter-based setups may be used</td></tr><tr><td>Plate reader- Spark</td><td>Tecan</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Potassium phosphate monobasic</td><td>Honeywell</td><td>P0662</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Sodium chloride</td><td>Sigma-Aldrich</td><td>S/3160/63</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Stereomicroscope setup with transillumination base</td><td>Leica</td><td>MZ6, or M80</td><td>Magnification from 0.6-0.8x up to 40-60x is necessary, as is a good quality transillumination base with a deformable, titable or slidable mirror to adjust contrast</td></tr><tr><td>t-BHP (&lt;em&gt;tert&lt;/em&gt;-Butyl hydroperoxide)</td><td>Sigma-Aldrich</td><td>458139</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Transparent adhesive seals Nunc</td><td>Fisher Scientific</td><td>101706871</td><td>It is important that it is transparent and that it can tolerate the temperatures involved in the assays.</td></tr><tr><td>Tryptophan</td><td>Sigma-Aldrich</td><td>1278-7099</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Yeast extract</td><td>Fisher Scientific</td><td>BP1422</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

high-throughput screening of microbial isolates with impact on caenorhabditis elegans health

With its small size, short lifespan, and easy genetics, Caenorhabditis elegans offers a convenient platform to study the impact of microbial isolates on host physiology. It also fluoresces in blue when dying, providing a convenient means of pinpointing death. This property has been exploited to develop high-throughput label-free C. elegans survival assays (LFASS). These involve time-lapse fluorescence recording of worm populations set in multiwell plates, from which population median time of death can be derived. The present study adopts the LFASS approach to screen multiple microbial isolates at once for the effects on C. elegans susceptibility to severe heat and oxidative stresses. Such microbial screening pipeline, which can notably be used to prescreen probiotics, using severe stress resistance as a proxy for host health is reported here. The protocol describes how to grow both C. elegans gut microbiota isolate collections and synchronous worm populations in multiwell arrays before combining them for the assays. The example provided covers the testing of 47 bacterial isolates and one control strain on two worm strains, in two stress assays in parallel. However, the approach pipeline is readily scalable and applicable to the screening of many other modalities. Thus, it provides a versatile setup to rapidly survey a multiparametric landscape of biological and biochemical conditions that impact C. elegans health.

LFASS assays provide robust, high-throughput, and rapid screening of multiple test conditions at once, such as screening numerous genetic and microbiota parameters that contribute to stress resistance and aging. It only takes 2-3 weeks for the experiment to acquire an extensive dataset of multiple test conditions. L4 + 36 h adult wild-type worm populations were exposed to 42 &#176;C thermal stress and 7% t-BHP-induced oxidative stress after a 36 h culture on 48 gut microbial isolates for 36 h. The assay was perf...

Watch this Scientific Journal Video about High-Throughput Screening of Microbial Isolates with Impact on Caenorhabditis elegans Health at JoVE.com

High-Throughput Screening of Microbial Isolates with Impact on Caenorhabditis elegans Health

Gut microbes may positively or negatively impact the health of their host via specific or conserved mechanisms. Caenorhabditis elegans is a convenient platform to screen for such microbes. The present protocol describes high-throughput screening of 48 bacterial isolates for impact on nematode stress resistance, used as a proxy for worm health.

High-Throughput Screening of Microbial Isolates with Impact on Caenorhabditis elegans Health

With its small size, short lifespan, and easy genetics, Caenorhabditis elegans offers a convenient platform to study the impact of microbial isolates on ...

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Biology

2.7K Views.  Lancaster University. Dit protocol beschrijft hoe te screenen op bacteriën met impact op C.elegans oxidatieve thermische stressbestendigheid in twee C.elegans-stammen op 48 bacteriële isolaten parallel. Deze aanpak is veelzijdig en schaalbaar. Het biedt een snelle screening van meerdere aandoeningen met impact op C.elegans tegen gezondheid, wat van toepassing is op de studie van mechanismen van gezondheid en ziekten.Met behulp van stressresistentie als een proxy voor gezondheid, is deze pijplijn gemakkeli...

Video: High-Throughput Screening of Microbial Isolates with Impact on Caenorhabditis elegans Health

The Nematode Caenorhabditis Elegans - A Versatile In Vivo Model to Study Host-microbe Interactions

We demonstrate a method using Caenorhabditis elegans as a model host to study microbial interaction. Microbes are introduced via the diet making the intestine the primary location for disease. The nematode intestine structurally and functionally mimics mammalian intestines and is transparent making it amenable to microscopic study of colonization. Here we show that pathogens can cause disease and death. We are able to identify microbial mutants that show altered virulence. Its conserved innate response to biotic stresses makes C. elegans an excellent system to probe facets of host innate immune interactions. We show that hosts with mutations in the dual oxidase gene cannot produce reactive oxygen species and are unable to resist microbial insult. We further demonstrate the versatility of the presented survival assay by showing that it can be used to study the effects of inhibitors of microbial growth. This assay may also be used to discover fungal virulence factors as targets for the development of novel antifungal agents, as well as provide an opportunity to further uncover host-microbe interactions. The design of this assay lends itself well to high throughput whole-genome screens, while the ability to cryo-preserve worms for future use makes it a cost-effective and attractive whole animal model to study.

The Nematode Caenorhabditis Elegans - A Versatile In Vivo Model to Study Host-microbe Interactions

Here, we present the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as a versatile host model to study microbial interaction.

We demonstrate a method using Caenorhabditis elegans as a model host to study microbial interaction. Microbes are introduced via the diet making the ...

Genetics

A Simple Method for High Throughput Chemical Screening in Caenorhabditis Elegans

Caenorhabditis elegans is a useful organism for testing chemical effects on physiology. Whole organism small molecule screens offer significant advantages for identifying biologically active chemical structures that can modify complex phenotypes such as lifespan. Described here is a simple protocol for producing hundreds of 96-well culture plates with fairly consistent numbers of C. elegans in each well. Next, we specified how to use these cultures to screen thousands of chemicals for effects on the lifespan of the nematode C. elegans. This protocol makes use of temperature sensitive sterile strains, agar plate conditions, and simple animal handling to facilitate the rapid and high throughput production of synchronized animal cultures for screening.

A Simple Method for High Throughput Chemical Screening in Caenorhabditis Elegans

Here we describe a simple protocol for rapidly producing hundreds of nematode growth media agar, 96-well culture plates with consistent numbers of Caenorhhabditis elegans per well. These cultures are useful for the phenotypic screening of whole organisms. We focus here on using these cultures to screen chemicals for pro-longevity effects.

Caenorhabditis elegans is a useful organism for testing chemical effects on physiology. Whole organism small molecule screens offer significant advantages ...

Biochemistry

Plate-based Large-scale Cultivation of Caenorhabditis elegans: Sample Preparation for the Study of Metabolic Alterations in Diabetes

Culturing Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) in a large-scale manner on agar plates can be time-consuming and difficult. This protocol describes a simple and inexpensive method to obtain a large number of animals for the isolation of proteins to proceed with a western blot, mass spectrometry, or further proteomics analyses. Furthermore, an increase of nematode numbers for immunostainings and the integration of multiple analyses under the same culturing conditions can easily be achieved. Additionally, a transfer between plates with different experimental conditions is facilitated. Common techniques in plate culture involve the transfer of a single C. elegans using a platinum wire and the transfer of populated agar chunks using a scalpel. However, with increasing nematode numbers, these techniques become overly time-consuming. This protocol describes the large-scale culture of C. elegans including numerous steps to minimize the impact of the sample preparation on the physiology of the worm. Fluid and shear stress can alter the lifespan of and metabolic processes in C. elegans, thus requiring a detailed description of the critical steps in order to retrieve reliable and reproducible results. C. elegans is a model organism, consisting of neuronal cells for up to one-third, but lacking blood vessels, thus providing the possibility to investigate solely neuronal alterations independent of vascular control. Recently, early neurodegeneration in diabetic retinopathy was found prior to vascular alterations. Thus, C. elegans is of special interest for studying general mechanisms of diabetic complications. For example, an increased formation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) and reactive oxygen species (ROS) is observed, which are reproducibly found in C. elegans. Protocols to handle samples of adequate size for a broader spectrum of investigations are presented here, exemplified by the study of diabetes-induced biochemical alterations. In general, this protocol can be useful for studies requiring large C. elegans numbers and in which liquid culture is not suitable.

Plate-based Large-scale Cultivation of Caenorhabditis elegans: Sample Preparation for the Study of Metabolic Alterations in Diabetes

This protocol describes a method for the large-scale cultivation of Caenorhabditis elegans on solid media. As an alternative to liquid culture, this protocol allows obtaining parameters of different scales under plate-based cultivation. This increases the comparability of results by omitting the morphological and metabolic differences between liquid and solid media culture.

Culturing Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) in a large-scale manner on agar plates can be time-consuming and difficult. This protocol describes a simple ...

A High-throughput Assay for the Prediction of Chemical Toxicity by Automated Phenotypic Profiling of Caenorhabditis elegans

Applying toxicity testing of chemicals in higher order organisms, such as mice or rats, is time-consuming and expensive, due to their long lifespan and maintenance issues. On the contrary, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) has advantages to make it an ideal choice for toxicity testing: a short lifespan, easy cultivation, and efficient reproduction. Here, we describe a protocol for the automatic phenotypic profiling of C. elegans in a 384-well plate. The nematode worms are cultured in a 384-well plate with liquid medium and chemical treatment, and videos are taken of each well to quantify the chemical influence on 33 worm features. Experimental results demonstrate that the quantified phenotype features can classify and predict the acute toxicity for different chemical compounds and establish a priority list for further traditional chemical toxicity assessment tests in a rodent model.

A High-throughput Assay for the Prediction of Chemical Toxicity by Automated Phenotypic Profiling of Caenorhabditis elegans

A quantitative method has been developed to identify and predict the acute toxicity of chemicals by automatically analyzing the phenotypic profiling of Caenorhabditis elegans. This protocol describes how to treat worms with chemicals in a 384-well plate, capture videos, and quantify toxicological related phenotypes.

Applying toxicity testing of chemicals in higher order organisms, such as mice or rats, is time-consuming and expensive, due to their long lifespan and ...

Environment

Surveying Low-Cost Methods to Measure Lifespan and Healthspan in Caenorhabditis elegans

The discovery and development of Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism was influential in biology, particularly in the field of aging. Many historical and contemporary studies have identified thousands of lifespan-altering paradigms, including genetic mutations, transgenic gene expression, and hormesis, a beneficial, low-grade exposure to stress. With its many advantages, including a short lifespan, easy and low-cost maintenance, and fully sequenced genome with homology to almost two-thirds of all human genes, C. elegans has quickly been adopted as an outstanding model for stress and aging biology. Here, several standardized methods are surveyed for measuring lifespan and healthspan that can be easily adapted into almost any research environment, especially those with limited equipment and funds. The incredible utility of C. elegans is featured, highlighting the capacity to perform powerful genetic analyses in aging biology without the necessity of extensive infrastructure. Finally, the limitations of each analysis and alternative approaches are discussed for consideration.

Surveying Low-Cost Methods to Measure Lifespan and Healthspan in Caenorhabditis elegans

Caenorhabditis elegans serve as an excellent model system with robust and low-cost methods for surveying healthspan, lifespan, and resilience to stress.

The discovery and development of Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism was influential in biology, particularly in the field of aging. Many ...

High-throughput Screening and Biosensing with Fluorescent C. elegans Strains

High-throughput screening (HTS) is a powerful approach for identifying chemical modulators of biological processes. However, many compounds identified in screens using cell culture models are often found to be toxic or pharmacologically inactive in vivo1-2. Screening in whole animal models can help avoid these pitfalls and streamline the path to drug development.
C. elegans is a multicellular model organism well suited for HTS. It is small (&lt;1 mm) and can be economically cultured and dispensed in liquids. C. elegans is also one of the most experimentally tractable animal models permitting rapid and detailed identification of drug mode-of-action3.
We describe a protocol for culturing and dispensing fluorescent strains of C. elegans for high-throughput screening of chemical libraries or detection of environmental contaminants that alter the expression of a specific gene. Large numbers of developmentally synchronized worms are grown in liquid culture, harvested, washed, and suspended at a defined density. Worms are then added to black, flat-bottomed 384-well plates using a peristaltic liquid dispenser. Small molecules from a chemical library or test samples (e.g., water, food, or soil) can be added to wells with worms. In vivo, real-time fluorescence intensity is measured with a fluorescence microplate reader. This method can be adapted to any inducible gene in C. elegans for which a suitable reporter is available. Many inducible stress and developmental transcriptional pathways are well defined in C. elegans and GFP transgenic reporter strains already exist for many of them4. When combined with the appropriate transgenic reporters, our method can be used to screen for pathway modulators or to develop robust biosensor assays for environmental contaminants. 
We demonstrate our C. elegans culture and dispensing protocol with an HTS assay we developed to monitor the C. elegans cap &#x2018;n&#x2019; collar transcription factor SKN-1. SKN-1 and its mammalian homologue Nrf2 activate cytoprotective genes during oxidative and xenobiotic stress5-10. Nrf2 protects mammals from numerous age-related disorders such as cancer, neurodegeneration, and chronic inflammation and has become a major chemotherapeutic target11-13.Our assay is based on a GFP transgenic reporter for the SKN-1 target gene gst-414, which encodes a glutathione-s transferase6. The gst-4 reporter is also a biosensor for xenobiotic and oxidative chemicals that activate SKN-1 and can be used to detect low levels of contaminants such as acrylamide and methyl-mercury15-16.

High-throughput Screening and Biosensing with Fluorescent C. elegans Strains

A procedure for liquid-based culturing and dispensing of C. elegans strains expressing fluorescent reporter proteins is described that does not require expensive sorting equipment. This approach can be applied to numerous inducible C. elegans genes for drug discovery or biosensing of contaminants.

High-throughput screening (HTS) is a powerful approach for identifying chemical modulators of biological processes.  However, many compounds identified in ...

A High-throughput, High-content, Liquid-based C. elegans Pathosystem

The number of new drugs identified by traditional, in vitro screens has waned, reducing the success of this approach in the search for new weapons to combat multiple drug resistance. This has led to the conclusion that researchers do not only need to find new drugs, but also need to develop new ways of finding them. Amongst the most promising candidate methods are whole-organism, in vivo assays that use high-throughput, phenotypic readouts and hosts that range from Caenorhabditis elegans to Danio rerio. These hosts have several powerful advantages, including dramatic reductions in false positive hits, as compounds that are toxic to the host and/or biounavailable are typically dropped in the initial screen, prior to costly follow up.
Here we show how our assay has been used to interrogate host variation in the well-documented C. elegans&#8212;Pseudomonas aeruginosa liquid killing pathosystem. We also demonstrate several extensions of this well-worked out technique. For example, we are able to carry out high-throughput genetic screens using RNAi in 24- or 96-well plate formats to query host factors in this host-pathogen interaction. Using this assay, whole genome screens can be completed in only a few months, which can dramatically simplify the task of identifying drug targets, potentially without the need for laborious biochemical purification approaches.
We also report here a variation of our method that substitutes the gram-positive bacterium Enterococcus faecalis for the gram-negative pathogen P. aeruginosa. Much as is the case for P. aeruginosa, killing by E. faecalis is time-dependent. Unlike previous C. elegans&#8212;E. faecalis assays, our assay for E. faecalis does not require preinfection, improving its safety profile and reducing the chances of contaminating liquid-handling equipment. The assay is highly robust, showing ~95% death rates 96 h post infection.

A High-throughput, High-content, Liquid-based C. elegans Pathosystem

Here we describe a protocol that is an adaptable, whole host, high-content screening tool that can be utilized to study host-pathogen interactions and be used for drug discovery.

The number of new drugs identified by traditional, in vitro screens has waned, reducing the success of this approach in the search for new weapons to ...

Immunology and Infection

Quantitative and Automated High-throughput Genome-wide RNAi Screens in C. elegans

RNA interference is a powerful method to understand gene function, especially when conducted at a whole-genome scale and in a quantitative context. In C. elegans, gene function can be knocked down simply and efficiently by feeding worms with bacteria expressing a dsRNA corresponding to a specific gene 1. While the creation of libraries of RNAi clones covering most of the C. elegans genome 2,3 opened the way for true functional genomic studies (see for example 4-7), most established methods are laborious. Moy and colleagues have developed semi-automated protocols that facilitate genome-wide screens 8. The approach relies on microscopic imaging and image analysis. 
	Here we describe an alternative protocol for a high-throughput genome-wide screen, based on robotic handling of bacterial RNAi clones, quantitative analysis using the COPAS Biosort (Union Biometrica (UBI)), and an integrated software: the MBioLIMS (Laboratory Information Management System from Modul-Bio) a technology that provides increased throughput for data management and sample tracking. The method allows screens to be conducted on solid medium plates. This is particularly important for some studies, such as those addressing host-pathogen interactions in C. elegans, since certain microbes do not efficiently infect worms in liquid culture.
	We show how the method can be used to quantify the importance of genes in anti-fungal innate immunity in C. elegans. In this case, the approach relies on the use of a transgenic strain carrying an epidermal infection-inducible fluorescent reporter gene, with GFP under the control of the promoter of the antimicrobial peptide gene nlp 29 and a red fluorescent reporter that is expressed constitutively in the epidermis. The latter provides an internal control for the functional integrity of the epidermis and nonspecific transgene silencing9. When control worms are infected by the fungus they fluoresce green. Knocking down by RNAi a gene required for nlp 29 expression results in diminished fluorescence after infection. Currently, this protocol allows more than 3,000 RNAi clones to be tested and analyzed per week, opening the possibility of screening the entire genome in less than 2 months.

Quantitative and Automated High-throughput Genome-wide RNAi Screens in C. elegans

We describe a protocol using C. elegans and RNAi feeding libraries that allows automated measurement of multiple parameters such as fluorescence, size and opacity of individual worms in a population. We give one example of a screen to identify genes involved in anti-fungal innate immunity in C. elegans.

RNA interference is a powerful method to understand gene function, especially when conducted at a whole-genome scale and in a quantitative context. In C. ...

Selective Cleaning of Wild Caenorhabditis Nematodes to Enrich for Intestinal Microbiome Bacteria

Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans)&#160;has proven to be an excellent model for studying host-microbe interactions and the microbiome, especially in the context of the intestines. Recently, ecological sampling of wild Caenorhabditis nematodes has discovered a diverse array of associated microbes, including bacteria, viruses, fungi, and microsporidia. Many of these microbes have interesting colonization or infection phenotypes that warrant further study, but they are often unculturable. This protocol presents a method to enrich the desired intestinal microbes in C. elegans and related nematodes and reduce the presence of the many contaminating microbes adhering to the cuticle. This protocol involves forcing animals into the dauer stage of development and using a series of antibiotic and detergent washes to remove external contamination. As dauer animals have physiological changes that protect nematodes from harsh environmental conditions, any intestinal microbes will be protected from these conditions. But, for enrichment to work, the microbe of interest must be maintained when animals develop into dauers. When the animals leave the dauer stage, they are singly propagated into individual lines. F1 populations are then selected for desired microbes or infection phenotypes and against visible contamination. These methods will allow researchers to enrich unculturable microbes in the intestinal lumen, which make up part of the natural microbiome of C. elegans and intracellular intestinal pathogens. These microbes can then be studied for colonization or infection phenotypes and their effects on the host fitness.

Selective Cleaning of Wild Caenorhabditis Nematodes to Enrich for Intestinal Microbiome Bacteria

Wild Caenorhabditis nematodes are associated with many microbes, often in the gut lumen or infecting the intestine. This protocol details a method to enrich unculturable microbes colonizing the intestine, taking advantage of the resistance of the dauer cuticle.

Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans)&#160;has proven to be an excellent model for studying host-microbe interactions and the microbiome, especially in the ...

A Screenable In Vivo Assay for Mitochondrial Modulators Using Transgenic Bioluminescent Caenorhabditis elegans

The multicellular model organism Caenorhabditis elegans is a small nematode of approximately 1 mm in size in adulthood that is genetically and experimentally tractable. It is economical and easy to culture and dispense in liquid medium which makes it well suited for medium-throughput screening. We have previously validated the use of transgenic luciferase expressing C. elegans strains to provide rapid in vivo assessment of the nematode&#8217;s ATP levels.1-3 Here we present the required materials and procedure to carry out bioassays with the bioluminescent C. elegans strains PE254 or PE255 (or any of their derivative strains). The protocol allows for in vivo detection of sublethal effects of drugs that may identify mitochondrial toxicity, as well as for in vivo detection of potential beneficial drug effects. Representative results are provided for the chemicals paraquat, rotenone, oxaloacetate and for four firefly luciferase inhibitory compounds. The methodology can be scaled up to provide a platform for screening drug libraries for compounds capable of modulating mitochondrial function. Pre-clinical evaluation of drug toxicity is often carried out on immortalized cancerous human cell lines which derive ATP mostly from glycolysis and are often tolerant of mitochondrial toxicants.4,5 In contrast, C. elegans depends on oxidative phosphorylation to sustain development into adulthood, drawing a parallel with humans and providing a unique opportunity for compound evaluation in the physiological context of a whole live multicellular organism.

A Screenable In Vivo Assay for Mitochondrial Modulators Using Transgenic Bioluminescent Caenorhabditis elegans

A protocol is described for in vivo detection of effects of mitochondrial inhibitors in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans and for identification of potential enhancing compounds. This protocol can be used to screen drug libraries for compounds modulating mitochondrial function.

High-Throughput Screening of Microbial Isolates with Impact on Caenorhabditis elegans Health

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