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Fig. 3 | BMC Biology

Fig. 3

From: The native microbiome of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans: gateway to a new host-microbiome model

Fig. 3

Interaction of individual bacterial isolates with C. elegans. a Persistence of bacterial isolates in the C. elegans gastrointestinal tract. We assessed the presence of selected bacteria at the beginning of the experiment (0 h, black color) and after 24 h on either a lawn of the same bacterium (dark red colour) or an empty plate (light red colour), using fluorescence in situ hybridization with eubacterial probe EUB338. Bacterial load was quantified in four categories: (0) absent, (1) single cells, countable, (2) clumps of cells, too many to count, and (3) region is filled. Results are shown for an E. coli control and seven bacterial isolates: Pseudomonas MY11b, Comamonas MY131b, Pseudomonas MY187b, Pseudomonas MY193b, Stenotrophomonas MY57b, Ochrobactrum MY71b, and Achromobacter MY9b. Barplots show the mean bacterial load of 10 worms with standard error of the mean of a total of three independent replicates (raw data in Additional file 1: Table S1-17). b, c Nematode population size on either the experimental microbiome community (b) or individual bacteria (c). Population size was measured as total offspring of three N2 hermaphrodites after 5 days. In (b), population size was determined under standard and different stress conditions, including normal nematode growth medium (NGM), peptone-free medium (PFM) at three temperatures (15 °C, 20 °C, 25 °C), and five salt concentrations (0–200 mM NaCl). Please note that the standard laboratory growth conditions for C. elegans in our lab consist of either PFM or NGM at 20 °C and 50 mM NaCl. In (c), all experiments were performed on PFM at 20 °C and 50 mM NaCl. The dashed lines indicate the median worm fitness on E. coli OP50 under the respective control conditions of the respective experiments. Asterisks denote significant differences from the E. coli control (*, α ≤ 0.05, false discovery rate-corrected for (c), Additional file 1: Tables S1-19 and S1-21, n ≥ 10; the raw data is provided in Additional file 1: Tables S1-18 and S1-20). Colors highlight the different bacterial groups

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