Expanding the Caenorhabditis elegans toolkit with gonad explants

Animal development is a complex process that requires the coordination of a plethora of pathways in space and time. In several species, the availability of tissue explants has provided a simplified context that facilitates mechanistic investigations, particularly into dynamic events. Here, we demonstrate that extruded Caenorhabditis elegans gonads are a viable tissue explant system for this model organism. Using live-cell imaging, we show that C. elegans gonad explants retain many tissue properties that have been documented in vivo, including mitosis, meiosis, apoptosis and gametogenesis. We further show that C. elegans explants are acutely responsive to treatment with the microtubule depolymerizing drug nocodazole. Thus, C. elegans gonad explants are a tractable system in which live-cell imaging and acute drug treatment can be combined to decipher the mechanisms governing germline development.