April 2015: This Month in JoVE - Studying Locomotion in Drunken Worms, Preserving Human Liver for Transplantation, and Visualizing Bacterial Swarms

Protocol

Preparation, Imaging, and Quantification of Bacterial Surface Motility Assays

Nydia Morales-Soto^1,2, Morgen E. Anyan¹, Anne E. Mattingly¹, Chinedu S. Madukoma¹, Cameron W. Harvey³, Alber Mark³, Eric Déziel⁴, Daniel B. Kearns⁵, Joshua D. Shrout^1,2,6

¹Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Notre Dame, ²Eck Institute for Global Health, University of Notre Dame, ³Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics, University of Notre Dame, ⁴INRS-Institut Armand-Frappier, ⁵Department of Biology, Indiana University, ⁶Department of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame

Swarming motility is influenced by physical and environmental factors. We describe a two-phase protocol and guidelines to circumvent the challenges commonly associated with swarm assay preparation and data collection. A macroscopic imaging technique is employed to obtain detailed information on swarm behavior that is not provided by current analysis techniques.

The Modified Hole Board – Measuring Behavior, Cognition and Social Interaction in Mice and Rats

Maaike Labots^1,2, Hein A. Van Lith^1,2, Frauke Ohl^1,2, Saskia S. Arndt^1,2

¹Department of Animals in Science and Society, Utrecht University, ²Brain Center Rudolf Magnus

This protocol describes the modified hole board, which is a behavioral test set-up that comprises the characteristics of an open field and a traditional hole board. This set-up enables the differential analysis of unconditioned behavior of small laboratory mammals as well as the analysis of cognitive abilities.

Functional Human Liver Preservation and Recovery by Means of Subnormothermic Machine Perfusion

Bote G. Bruinsma*¹, James H. Avruch*², Pepijn D. Weeder¹, Gautham V. Sridharan¹, Basak E. Uygun¹, Negin G. Karimian¹, Robert J. Porte³, James F. Markmann², Heidi G. Yeh², Korkut Uygun¹

¹Center for Engineering in Medicine, Dept. of Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, ²Transplant Center, Dept. of Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, ³Section of Hepatobiliary Surgery and Liver Transplantation, Department of Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen

We describe a method of ex vivo machine perfusion of human liver grafts at subnormothermic temperature (21°C).

An Assay for Measuring the Effects of Ethanol on the Locomotion Speed of Caenorhabditis elegans

Andrew G. Davies^1,2, GinaMari G. Blackwell^1,2, Richard C. Raabe¹, Jill C. Bettinger^1,2

¹Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Virginia Commonwealth University, ²VCU Alcohol Research Center, Virginia Commonwealth University

C. elegans is a useful model for studying the effects of ethanol on behavior. We present a behavioral assay that quantifies the effects of ethanol on the locomotion speed of crawling worms; both initial sensitivity and the development of acute functional tolerance to ethanol can be measured with this assay.