To test for worm invasion and persistence, the slugs were dissected and their intestines assessed for the presence of fluorescent worms after 24, 48 h or 6 days.
Because of the lower speed, Smed-dynA-1 RNAi) wormSmed-dynA-1 RNAier Smed-dynA-1 RNAi (112±2 sec versus 73±3 sec; mean ± s.e.m.; Fig. 5C; Table 1).
Tether tension and extension were converted to contour length using the Worm-Like-Chain approximation with persistence length p=30 nm, and stretch modulus S = 1200 pN·nm (Baumann et al., 1997).
Although recent studies have demonstrated that free-living nematodes could act as vectors of opportunistic pathogens in soil, the extent to which worms may contribute to the persistence and spread of these bacteria has not been quantified.
The persistence obtained from the worm-like chain model (W) is close to the exact result in the coil regime (also in the good solvent) but near at and above the transition produces the largest values of all approximations.
Based on these data, we have developed a strategy to reliably extract the persistence length of short worm-like chain fragments or network forming filaments with unknown polymer-surface interactions.
The persistence time of control RNAi) worms is largely set by the size of the container – because they move fast, they reach the boundary quickly, upon which their direction of motion changes, causing them to lose correlation.
Worm-like single molecular morphology with large persistence length is observed on different substrates by atomic force microscopy.
This observation, together with the value of the Mark-Houwink-Sakurada exponent, a<1, indicates that these polymers do not behave in solution as rigid-rod polymers, but most likely as worm-like chains with a relatively large persistence length.
Moreover, aging in the worm facilitates intraluminal genetic transfer due to increased persistence of founding colonizing bacterial strains.
