GMU:Flagelates, Nematodes, and I/Nino Schmidt

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Project

I am trying to find out how nematode Heterorhabditis bacteriophora are reacting to salt and sugar. I'm trying to find out if they prefer one environment more or even die in one. The nematodes stay in petri dishes with water, as we have found out that this is where they have the best chance of survival.

These following articles inspired me:

Sugar in the Garden and The Role of Sugar Transporter Genes during Early Infection by Nematodes

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General informations about nematodes:

[[1]] (Wikipedia)

-> tiny, threadlike, colorless, unsegmented roundworms -> over 40.000 species (many are not yet figured out) -> not related to earthworms -> plant-feeding nematodes live in soil -> most of them are to small the be seen with naked eye but the longest known nematode is thirteen meters long and it resides in the sperm whale

first attempts to cook a medium in the laboratory:

-> before i came up with the idea of the following experiment

Project implementation idea:

I try to find nematodes in soil by dissolving the earth in water.

-> since i can't get any from the BioLab

I am going to try to divide the namdeaths found in the earth into 4 petri dishes.

the petri dishes contain the following:

first petri dish: Nematodes in water (as a control, as they should survive here for a while)

second petri dish: Nematodes and salt which is dissolved in water

third petri dish: Nematodes and sugar which is dissolved in water

fourth petri dish: Nematodes and sugar on the on and salt on the other side of the petri dish with a little bit of water (to see if they prefer and move to one side)

-> Later I adapted the distribution of the petri dishes to the new circumstances that arose during the experiment (read in the protocol below)

My first attempts to find Nematodes in soil:

The Microscope i am using

The soil i have tried to disolve in water

This what you can see looking through the microscope with a smartphone camera

-> unfortuantely i can see no Nematodes

It is very hard to find Nematodes in soil and especially afterwards to isolate them.

Because of that Miga is going to send me Nematodes to my post adress at home.

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Day 1 with the Nematodes

Today i received the Nematodes. I am going to disolve them in water (room temperature) and try to bring them back to life. As soon as they start to move i am going to contiune the expermient.

Remark: If you are trying find nematodes in soil and isolate them afterwards as i tried in the first place you may find this website helpful: Nematode Isolation

In the following video which i uploaded to Youtube you can see the Nematodes through a cellphone microscope. At that time, hoewever, they haven't moved yet.: Nematodes that don't move

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Day 2 with the Nematodes

Today I tried to get the nematodes moving in differently tempered water. I tried it with hot, cold and water that I put in the refrigerator together with the nematodes. They didn't move / live in anyone. After that, I came up with the idea of looking at whether they are moving directly from the packaging when they are dry, with success! In the following YouTube video, I recorded them moving.: moving Nematodes

Now that I know that they don't seem to move or survive in water, I'm going to continue my experiment differently. I am going to disolve sugar in one and salt in another petri dish with water. than I'll wait for the water to evaporate. (the petri dishes should now have a layer of salt and sugar) After that i am going to put the nematodes without water on top of the dried disolved sugar and salt petri dishes. I'll see how the nematodes behave on the individual petri dishes and how long they stay alive. As a check, I'll also put nematodes in a clean petri dish.

In the following picutres you can see how i disolved the sugar and salt. In order for the water to evaporate faster, i then put it an a heater.

Remark: To prevent the petri dishes from beeing swapped, they are labaled!

I will contiune with the experiment as soon as the water has evaporated