Caenorhabditis elegans is a valuable model organism in biomedical research that has led to major discoveries in the fields of neurodegeneration, cancer and aging. Because movement phenotypes are commonly used and represent strong indicators of C. elegans fitness, there is an increasing need to replace manual assessments of worm motility with automated measurements to increase throughput and minimize observer biases. Here, we provide a protocol for the implementation of the improved wide field-of-view nematode tracking platform (WF-NTP), which enables the simultaneous analysis of hundreds of worms with respect to multiple behavioral parameters. The protocol takes only a few hours to complete, excluding the time spent culturing C. elegans, and includes (i) experimental design and preparation of samples, (ii) data recording, (iii) software management with appropriate parameter choices and (iv) post-experimental data analysis. We compare the WF-NTP with other existing worm trackers, including those having high spatial resolution. The main benefits of WF-NTP relate to the high number of worms that can be assessed at the same time on a whole-plate basis and the number of phenotypes that can be screened for simultaneously.

中文翻译：

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使用宽视野线虫追踪平台评估秀丽隐杆线虫的运动相关表型。

秀丽隐杆线虫是生物医学研究中的一种有价值的模式生物，已导致神经退行性变，癌症和衰老领域的重大发现。由于运动表型是常用的，并且代表线虫适应性的有力指标，因此越来越需要用自动测量代替对蠕虫蠕动的手动评估，以增加产量并最大程度地减少观察者的偏见。在这里，我们为改进的宽视域线虫跟踪平台（WF-NTP）的实施提供了协议，该协议可以针对多个行为参数同时分析数百种蠕虫。该协议仅需几个小时即可完成，而无需花费培养秀丽隐杆线虫的时间，并且包括（i）实验设计和样品制备，（ii）数据记录，（iii）具有适当参数选择的软件管理，以及（iv）实验后数据分析。我们将WF-NTP与其他现有的蠕虫跟踪器（包括具有高空间分辨率的蠕虫跟踪器）进行了比较。WF-NTP的主要好处涉及可以在整个平板上同时进行评估的大量蠕虫，以及可以同时筛选的表型数目。