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Compost Microcosms as Microbially Diverse, Natural-like Environments for Microbiome Research in Caenorhabditis elegans
Chapters
- 00:04Introduction
- 00:36Preparation of Compost
- 01:20Preparation of Compost Microcosms and Raising Worms in Compost Microcosms
- 02:39Preparing a Baermann Funnel, Harvesting Worms from Microcosms, and Collecting the Respective Soil Samples
- 04:17Washing and Surface Sterilization of the Harvested Worms
- 05:43Results: Comparisons of Worm Gut Microbiomes and Environmental Communities
- 06:26Conclusion
Compost microcosms bring the microbial diversity found in nature into the laboratory to facilitate microbiome research in Caenorhabditis elegans. Provided here are protocols for setting up microcosm experiments, with the experiments demonstrating the ability to modulate environmental microbial diversity to explore the relationships between environmental microbial diversity and worm gut microbiome composition.
