Visualizing Bacteria in Nematodes using Fluorescent Microscopy

Symbioses, the living together of two or more organisms, are widespread throughout all kingdoms of life. As two of the most ubiquitous organisms on earth, nematodes and bacteria form a wide array of symbiotic associations that range from beneficial to pathogenic (1-3). One such association is the mutually beneficial relationship between Xenorhabdus bacteria and Steinernema nematodes, which has emerged as a model system of symbiosis (4). Steinernema nematodes are entomopathogenic, using their bacterial symbiont to kill insects (5). For transmission between insect hosts, the bacteria colonize the intestine of the nematode's infective juvenile stage (6-8). Recently, several other nematode species have been shown to utilize bacteria to kill insects (9-13), and investigations have begun examining the interactions between the nematodes and bacteria in these systems (9). We describe a method for visualization of a bacterial symbiont within or on a nematode host, taking advantage of the optical transparency of nematodes when viewed by microscopy. The bacteria are engineered to express a fluorescent protein, allowing their visualization by fluorescence microscopy. Many plasmids are available that carry genes encoding proteins that fluoresce at different wavelengths (i.e. green or red), and conjugation of plasmids from a donor Escherichia coli strain into a recipient bacterial symbiont is successful for a broad range of bacteria. The methods described were developed to investigate the association between Steinernema carpocapsae and Xenorhabdus nematophila (14). Similar methods have been used to investigate other nematode-bacterium associations (9,15-18)and the approach therefore is generally applicable. The method allows characterization of bacterial presence and localization within nematodes at different stages of development, providing insights into the nature of the association and the process of colonization (14,16,19). Microscopic analysis reveals both colonization frequency within a population and localization of bacteria to host tissues (14,16,19-21). This is an advantage over other methods of monitoring bacteria within nematode populations, such as sonication (22)or grinding (23), which can provide average levels of colonization, but may not, for example, discriminate populations with a high frequency of low symbiont loads from populations with a low frequency of high symbiont loads. Discriminating the frequency and load of colonizing bacteria can be especially important when screening or characterizing bacterial mutants for colonization phenotypes (21,24). Indeed, fluorescence microscopy has been used in high throughput screening of bacterial mutants for defects in colonization (17,18), and is less laborious than other methods, including sonication (22,25-27)and individual nematode dissection (28,29).