Bleaching to clean worms.

Removing bacterial contamination

1. Chunk a ~1 cm² area from the contaminated plate to a labeled 6 cm plate.
2. After 1–2 days, place 15 μL of bleach solution at the edge of a new, labeled 6 cm plate — as far from the bacteria spot as possible.
3. Place a minimum of ten gravid animals into the bleach; up to 20 is good. The bleach should dissolve the cuticle of the adult worms, releasing the embryos. Leave the plate lid-side up until all the bleach has soaked in, then move the plate lid-side down to the optimal temperature for the worms.
   • You can add a little more bleach (~10 μL) after placing the adults if some of the initial bleach absorbed into the plate.
4. After ~24 hours, move L1s from the bleach plate to a clean, labeled 6 cm plate. You want between 10 and 20 L1s per plate — the more the better. If you expect to need this strain a lot, pick 10–20 L1s to multiple plates.

<aside> ❓

Needs update. Step 2 refers to a bleach solution "(recipe below)", but no recipe appears anywhere on the page in the source. See the C. elegans Recipes page, or add the recipe here.

</aside>

Removing mold contamination

1. Chunk a ~1 cm² area from the contaminated plate to a labeled 6 cm plate.
2. After 10–30 minutes, pick 20–30 animals to a new, labeled 6 cm plate.
   • If the original contaminated plate is more than a month old, chunk a larger area (5 cm²) to the new plate to increase the likelihood of transferring live worms. It might take longer — up to 24 hours — for the worms to crawl from the chunk to the new plate.
3. If there was a lot of contamination, repeat steps 1 and 2 to allow the worms a second chance to crawl away from the mold.