The Basics of Setting up Successful Teaching Labs and Short-Term Projects with C. elegans

Caenorhabditis elegans is an excellent organism for teaching or doing short-term research projects because of the many freely-available comprehensive resources describing its genome and biology, its short-generation time and the ease of working with it in the lab. However, it can be daunting to begin a short-term project or a teaching lab with an organism with which one has little or no experience. Therefore, in this article, we will discuss the minimal equipment, reagents, and protocols needed to begin doing experiments with C. elegans as well as inclusive teaching practices. We will also describe a teaching laboratory for introductory or advanced neuroscience undergraduate courses where students learn to understand the relationship between genetic mutations and behavior through using chemotaxis assays. In addition, instructions for students for the lab module are provided in Subheading "Example of Teaching Lab Module for Students".