An introduction to worm lab: from culturing worms to mutagenesis

This protocol describes procedures to maintain nematodes in the laboratory and how to mutagenize them using two alternative methods: ethyl methane sulfonate (EMS) and 4, 5', 8-trimethylpsoralen combined with ultraviolet light (TMP/UV). Nematodes are powerful biological systems for genetics studies because of their simple body plan and mating system, which is composed of self-fertilizing hermaphrodites and males that can generate hundreds of progeny per animal. Nematodes are maintained in agar plates containing a lawn of bacteria and can be easily transferred from one plate to another using a pick. EMS is an alkylating agent commonly used to induce point mutations and small deletions, while TMP/UV mainly induces deletions. Depending on the species of nematode being used, concentrations of EMS and TMP will have to be optimized. To isolate recessive mutations of the nematode Pristionchus pacificus, animals of the F2 generation were visually screened for phenotypes. To illustrate these methods, we mutagenized worms and looked for Uncoordinated (Unc), Dumpy (Dpy) and Transformer (Tra) mutants.