[
International Worm Meeting,
2003]
An Incubator will be available on the International Space Station with capabilities that are well suited to examine the effects of microgravity and cosmic radiation on C. elegans. The Space Station Biological Research Project (SSBRP) Incubator provides temperature control between 4 and 45 degrees C, and has commandable data, power and video ports to support life science experiments. For the first Incubator flight (slated for launch in 2005) an experiment is planned with C. elegans, to examine growth, development, reproduction and behavior, as compared to ground-based controls. The C. elegans will be incubated in liquid axenic medium 1 in OptiCell (trademark) containers. During the 90 day increment, cultures will be subcultured and videotaped regularly, and live, chemically preserved and frozen samples will be collected. These samples will be analyzed for changes at the genetic and protein level. Ground studies will be presented on baseline growth and behavior of C. elegans in this hardware. Reference: 1 Lu, NC; Goetsch, KM. Carbohydrate requirement of Caenorhabditis elegans and the final development of a chemically defined medium. Nematologica 39(3):303-311, 1993
[
International C. elegans Meeting,
2001]
A High Resolution Digital 4-D-Microscope Anja-Kristina Schulz and Ralf Schnabel Institut fur Genetik, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Spielmannstraße 7, D-38106 Braunschweig, Germany The small size and transparency of the C. elegans embryo in combination with the known lineage offers the unique chance to analyse the consequences of manipulations, mutations or RNAi experiments and expression patterns of genes on the single cell level. 4D-microscopy is an ideal tool to follow and analyse the fate of many cells. The disadvantage of 4D-microscopes so far was that the high resolution required to "completely" analyse embryos was coupled to very expensive and special equipment as well as high running costs for the storage media. We recently designed a new system which can be built from commercially available parts and which stores high quality pictures. A 4D-microscope requires an excellent Nomarski optics, a matching analog camera (e.g. Hamamatsu Newvicon, PCO VX44), a frame grabber (Inspecta-2), a very precise control of the stage for the z-scans and a shutter for the light beam. The microscope is controlled by a PC (Windows NT) and the pictures are stored on a large hard disc as a series of bitmap files (BMP format). To save space on the hard disk an algorithm compresses the pictures by a factor of eight to ten without any visible quality loss (Wavelet compression, Luratech, Berlin); this works much better than for example JPEG compression. A full recording of 20.000 pictures only has 800 MB with this compression algorithm. When the Zeiss Axioplan Imaging with its new stage control is used the precision is high enough to acquire very precise z-series. Former models can be equipped with a piezo mover and an external shutter for the light beam. The new program allows to control the motorized functions of the Zeiss microscope. A special setup menu helps to find the optimal parameters for the recordings. Parameters like time, increment and position of the upper level can be corrected any time during the recording. The video window contains functions for an online enhancement of the pictures. The program also offers the necessary functions to document fluorescent pictures. We also designed a dual channel microscope which permits the alternate recording of Nomarski and fluorescence pictures which is suitable for the precise analysis of GFP expression patterns. The lineage analysis program SIMIBiocell was adapted to read the digital pictures.