Worm Breeder's Gazette 3(2): 16

These abstracts should not be cited in bibliographies. Material contained herein should be treated as personal communication and should be cited as such only with the consent of the author.

Technical note on: Use of a Modified M9 Buffer as an Incubation Medium for C. elegans ovotestis

M.A. Gibert, J. Starck

For radioautographic studies of in vitro RNA synthesis during C.  
elegans oogenesis, J.  Starck used M9 buffer (BRENNER, 1974) as an 
incubation medium.  The results of labelling were rather good, they 
showed a mode of RNA synthesis which should correspond to a normal 
metabolism, (J.  Starck, 1977).  The longer incubation time was two 
hours.
Electron microscopic studies showed that subcellular structures were 
not keep good 
we often 
remarked broken nuclear membranes and mitochondria as swelled nuclei.  
The oocytes seemed to be hypertrophied and parietal cells were crushed.
These observations became more numerous when the incubation times 
became longer.  Furthermore, systematic studies on fixatives showed 
that the best one has an osmotic pression around 400 mOsM 
the M9 
buffer osmotic pression is only about 300 mOsM.
We try to make better the incubation medium by adding saccharose.  
With 3% of this product, the osmotic pression of the medium, called 
M10, is about 400 mOsM.  New essays with this M10 gave the same 
results in photonic radioautographies.  In electron microscopic 
studies, we note a normal cellular ultrastructure, without accidents 
on nuclei or mitochondria.