Many of the bacterial strains allowed normal growth of C. elegans, but some caused developmental arrest, perhaps due to toxins or virulence factors that disrupt essential C. elegans processes. For the bacterial strains that caused growth defects, we grew eft-3(q145); pgp-5::gfp homozygous animals after an egg preparation from bleach on benign E. coli OP50 which does not disrupt activation of pgp-5::gfp in the eft-3(q145) background until the L4 larva stage and then transferred them to the tested bacterial species to assess induction of xenobiotic response genes in the adult. Animals grown exclusively on Alcaligenes spp. and Paenibacillus spp. are developmentally normal while Kocuria rhizophila feeding from the first larval stage induces L1-larval arrest, so Kocuria fed animals were grown on E. coli OP50 until the L4 stage and then assayed on Kocuria for induction of pgp-5::gfp in the eft-3(q145) background at the adult stage. Data is consolidated from three independent trials.
