The news of the first British grant of £1m towards sequencing the worm reached Sulston as a hand-written fax from the Wellcome trust.
But most developmental biologists assumed that the signaling was complete once the worm reached the larval stage.
The developmental stage of the animals was monitored visually until the worms reached the larvae L4 stage.
Embryos were placed on plates containing concentrated E. coli DH5α at 25°C until the worms reached the young adult stage.
When the worms reached the fourth juvenile stage FUdR was added at 200 μM final concentration to prevent progeny production.
Worms were then pelleted and replated onto 8P/NA22 plates without removal of the 6-OHDA and incubated for 3 days at 20° until the worms reached adulthood.
In humans, after the larvae are ingested, the cycle breaks when the worms reach the fifth stage, typically in the brain, where they die (3 ).
The lifespan extension is not attributable to delays in development as the worms reached adulthood synchronously with control (RNAi vector only) worms.
The eggs were incubated at 20 °C until the worms reached L4 larval stage and were transferred onto small NG-carbenicillin plates (ten animals per plate).
