Tardigrade Chemotaxis Assay Method Development
Start Date
August 2025
End Date
August 2025
Location
ALT 302
Abstract
The specific project that we are involved in is developing tardigrade chemotaxis assays. Tardigrades are microscopic extremophiles that are often thought of as not being capable of seeking out nutrients or demonstrating chemotaxis. We hypothesized that tardigrades do have the ability to recognize foods or poisons and move accordingly with or against a chemical concentration gradient as a result of this. There are no published methods for assaying chemotaxis in tardigrades, so our project focused on developing these methods. A successful assay needs to place tardigrades in an arena with two choices of chemicals in wells, kill tardigrades in the first well they enter, and not kill tardigrades outside of wells. Our initial testing arena had four wells containing test substance or water for controls. Sodium azide was added to each well to kill tardigrades at the first well they entered. Finding an arena design that reliably killed tardigrades in test wells, but not before, was challenging. We optimized assay design by varying arena plate size and well arrangement, concentration of sodium azide, and number of tardigrades used. Future work will employ our optimized assay design to screen a variety of relevant natural products and characterize tardigrade chemotactic responses.
Tardigrade Chemotaxis Assay Method Development
ALT 302
The specific project that we are involved in is developing tardigrade chemotaxis assays. Tardigrades are microscopic extremophiles that are often thought of as not being capable of seeking out nutrients or demonstrating chemotaxis. We hypothesized that tardigrades do have the ability to recognize foods or poisons and move accordingly with or against a chemical concentration gradient as a result of this. There are no published methods for assaying chemotaxis in tardigrades, so our project focused on developing these methods. A successful assay needs to place tardigrades in an arena with two choices of chemicals in wells, kill tardigrades in the first well they enter, and not kill tardigrades outside of wells. Our initial testing arena had four wells containing test substance or water for controls. Sodium azide was added to each well to kill tardigrades at the first well they entered. Finding an arena design that reliably killed tardigrades in test wells, but not before, was challenging. We optimized assay design by varying arena plate size and well arrangement, concentration of sodium azide, and number of tardigrades used. Future work will employ our optimized assay design to screen a variety of relevant natural products and characterize tardigrade chemotactic responses.
