Home › Biochemistry › C. elegans Positive Butanone Learning, Short-term, and Long-term Associative Memory Assays
Biochemistry JoVE (Open Access) Citable · DOI

C. elegans Positive Butanone Learning, Short-term, and Long-term Associative Memory Assays

DOI: 10.3791/2490-v
What you'll learn
  • ✓ Prepare and precondition C. elegans worms
  • ✓ Train worms for short-term memory
  • ✓ Train worms for long-term memory
  • ✓ Perform chemotaxis assay to test memory
Protocol

Biopharma Insights Here we describe methods to test C. elegans associative learning and short- and long-term associative memory. These population assays employ the worms abilities to chemotax toward volatile odorants, and form positive associations upon pairing food with the chemoattractant butanone. Increasing the number of conditioning periods induces long-term memory.

Difficulty
intermediate
Total time
~2 days
Model organism
Caenorhabditis elegans
Biosafety
BSL-1

Steps

1
Prepare and precondition worms

Grow worms and precondition them on plates without food for a set time before training.

▶ 01:15
2
Perform short-term memory training

Expose worms to butanone paired with food in a single massed training session.

▶ 02:47
3
Perform long-term memory training

Conduct spaced training sessions with rest intervals to induce long-term associative memory.

▶ 04:24
4
Run chemotaxis assay

Place trained worms on assay plates with butanone and control spots, then measure chemotaxis index.

▶ 06:16
5
Assess memory in worms

Calculate associative learning or memory indices based on chemotaxis results after short- or long-term training.

▶ 08:21
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