Measuring Caenorhabditis elegans Spatial Foraging and Food Intake Using Bioluminescent Bacteria.

ABSTRACT: For most animals, feeding includes two behaviors: foraging to find a food patch and food intake once a patch is found. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a useful model for studying the genetics of both behaviors. However, most methods of measuring feeding in worms quantify either foraging behavior or food intake, but not both. Imaging the depletion of fluorescently labeled bacteria provides information on both the distribution and amount of consumption, but even after patch exhaustion a prominent background signal remains, which complicates quantification. Here, we used a bioluminescent Escherichia coli strain to quantify C. elegans feeding. With light emission tightly coupled to active metabolism, only living bacteria are capable of bioluminescence, so the signal

SUBMITTER: Ding SS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7054024 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature