Worm Breeder's Gazette 3(2): 14a
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.
The brownish-yellow bacterium that commonly contaminates worm stocks is Pseudomonas aeruginosa. It is sensitive to gentamicin and colistin, we use gentamicin (10 g/ml) in some plates to control it. When present on plates, it reduces progeny production substantially and also causes rapid destruction of unfertilized oocytes. The bulk E. coli commercially available from Grain Processing Corp. can be grossly contaminated with Pseudomonas and other species. (When asked if they could prepare E. coli aseptically, the reply was 'No, the man that harvests the pellets scoops them up with his bare hands'. On special request he will wash his hands). After receiving a large batch of bacteria which would not grow worms well, we switched to growing our own E. coli in a Lab-Line High density fermentor.