Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am doing a project on maggot debriding therapy. I am placing a bacteria on both a piece of meat and on an invertebrate that is alive and can regenerate. I was thinking about doing worms, but I want to do an invertebrate that's a little bigger so I can see debriding process better. What other invertebrate can I use that regenerate their tissue?

Hi there,

Are you interested in determining whether maggots help the wound healing process? In this case, you'd probably want to compare wound healing or bacterial load from animals that did, or did not, receive maggot treatment. This may be a difficult thing to address in an invertebrate model system, if the size and voracity of the maggots makes them dangerous to small invertebrate animals exposed to them. In addition, behavioral responses of the animals used might limit the access of the "treatmemt" to the wound itself. To reduce these confounding factors, you might want to consider addressing a similar question in a plant-based model: does preferential consumption of wounded tissues by caterpillars reduce bacterial infection of wounded plant tissue?

If you're interested in looking into the extent to which symbionts in general help out with wound healing, maybe you could design an experiment in which an organism (plant or animal) is sterilized on its external surface, then wounded and inoculated at the wound with some pathogen. You might be able to see a beneficial effect of the native bacterial flora on wound healing processes.

-Will