Worm Breeder's Gazette 8(2): 54

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.

Growing a Lot of (Ugh! smelly!) Worms

J. Skimming, S.A. McLafferty, J.A. Lewis

Figure 1

In our efforts to make monoclonals against the levamisole receptor, 
we've needed a passel of worms.  Which means growing a helluva alot o' 
bacteria.  250 liter fermentors do not seem to abound in these parts 
and so we're unable to emulate the Johnson-Rand gang (1.5 kg of worms 
from a 250 L fermentor).  We've turned to making the best of our Lab-
Line S.M.S.  fermentor (see an earlier article by S.  Ward and E.  
Hogan, WBG 5 2, p.10).  Using pure oxygen and a slightly modified 
version of the SLBH medium of Sadler, Miwa, Maas and Smith, Laboratory 
Practices 23, p.642, 1974, we've been able to grow 260 gm of E.  coli 
per 3.3 liter of medium in a 7 hour fermentation run with very good 
reproducibility.  A simplified version of the method described by 
Sadler et al.  works just fine.  We use all El Cheapo chemicals from 
Sigma for our SLBH medium.  If you follow this method, be very careful 
with the oxygen.  As you should know, it makes things highly 
combustible.  Apart from the cost of the regulator and a tank rental 
charge, 244 cubic feet of oxygen cost us only $6.40 and it lasts 4 or 
5 runs, giving us an average of 80 gm more a run than the 180 gm 
yields described by Ward using air.
[see Figure 
1]
Use of the Sigma chemicals leads to a precipitate in the SLBH medium 
but otherwise things work just fine.  To start things off, a 300 ml 
overnight culture is grown at 37 C in SLBH.  We use E.  coli strain 
NA22 whose genotype seems to be lost in the Dark Ages but the genotype 
does include a ts lethal so careful temperature control is important.  
The next morning the S.M.S.  high density fermentor containing 3 
liters of the complete SLBH medium is inoculated with the overnight 
culture and run at 320 rpm with an initial O2 flow rate of 1-2 liter 
per minute at 1 or 2 psi.  Unlike the method of Sadler et al., all the 
glycerol needed is present from the start.  Also, to set up a run, we 
autoclave the growth chamber and media separately (partially 
necessitated by the small size of autoclaves in Missouri).  The growth 
chamber bottle is autoclaved lying on its side in a sling made from 
Tom Sanford's car seat belts.  Another useful invention of Tom's is 
that the exiting gas from the fermentor is directed down a drain and 
up the sewer side of the trap.  Such an exhaust tube goes a long way 
to making you more socially acceptable in your building.  After 3 
hours into the fermentor run, the O2 flow rate is turned up to 4-5 
liters per minute and left at this rate for the remainder of the run.  
Around 4 hours, a slow trickle of cooling water is turned on to cool 
the hot little growing bugs.  One advantage of the S.M.S.  fermentor 
is the bacteria produced are in such a small volume that they can 
easily be collected in about 10 sterile 500 ml centrifuge bottles.
Getting worms from the bacteria.  We've found Nalgene transparent 
polycarbonate carboys to be excellent worm growth chambers.  As 
advertised, they are lightweight and durable but somewhat more 
expensive than glass (~$40 from VWR).  Due to our puny autoclave size, 
we've had to cut most of the necks off our carboys and create 
makeshift caps out of the lids of Sigma kilogram bottles.  Two holes 
are cut in a lid as entrance and exit ports for 3/16 inch by 1/16 inch 
by 5/16 inch Tygon tubing to carry air into and out of a carboy.  A 
third 3/4 inch diameter hole is cut as a sampling port and plugged 
with a #3 silicone rubber stopper.  To keep the water level up, 
sterile water is also added through this port during worm growth (we 
don't think pre-humidifying air is good for the 'sterility' of worm 
cultures).  The Tygon tube bringing air into the carboy is run to the 
bottom of the carboy where it is held weighted by stainless steel nuts 
loosely held onto the tubing by inserting a flanged plastic tubing 
adapter into the end of the tubing.  The exit tubing begins just 
inside the makeshift lid and both inlet and exit tubing are glued to 
the lid by epoxy resin.  Air coming in through the inlet tube is 
filtered through sterile cotton packed in a gas drying tube.  Carboys 
are autoclaved filled with 16 liters of the modified S medium 
described by Ward (op cit).  E.  coli are added suspended in S medium 
to give a final concentration of 28 gm/liter of bugs and a final 
volume of 18 liters in the carboy.  Before inoculating with worms, a 
carboy is vigorously bubbled for 24 hours.  Aeration should be violent 
enough to form a standing wave 1 to 2 inches high.  We have otherwise 
proven a few times too many that the worms will die of anoxia.  The 
inoculum consists of 600 ml of a clearing culture of worms grown at a 
similar bacterial concentration in a 2800 ml Fernbach flask by rotary 
shaking.  With such an inoculum, the carboy clears in about 4 days and 
becomes mostly dauers about a week after that, yielding 100 to 130 gm 
of dauers from ~500 gm of E.  coli.  Carboys are sat in an ice-water 
filled sink for 2 hours and then allowed to continue settling 
overnight at 4 C.  After siphoning off the liquid, settled worms are 
cleaned by sedimentation through 14% w/w sucrose and flotation on 30% 
w/w sucrose in 250 ml centrifuge bottles spun at 2000 rpm in a Sorvall 
GSA head at 4 C.  Sucrose is employed because on this scale, Ficoll 
400 would be prohibitively expensive.  For regular stages of worm, 35% 
w/w sucrose probably could be substituted in the flotation step with 
some loss of worms to the bottom of the bottle.  A yield of over 200 
gm of worms per carboy should be obtainable if the worms are not 
allowed to go to dauers.  As for fermentor runs, directing the exhaust 
air from worm carboys down a drain helps make the air in the lab 
breathable.  Mixing some air in with the pure oxygen from fermentor 
runs is probably also a good idea to avoid accumulating an oxygen 
atmosphere in your local branch of the sewer.

Figure 1