Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

For my science experiment I am testing whether acai berries improve mealworm immunity. I will be feeding the berries to some of the mealworms, then I will infect the mealworms with e. coli to see if they have built up resistence. My question is how I would go about infecting the mealworms. I am not sure how I can easily and safely infect mealworms with e. coli.

Hi there,

You have a very interesting project idea!

Some questions you need to answer are:

(1) Do E. coli infect mealworms?
Just because humans can get infections from E. coli, it does not mean that E. coli is a pathogen across all organisms. Also, we (humans) actually have some E. coli that naturally live in our guts and do not cause infection.

I found one website that may help you get started to determine something that does affect mealworms: http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/liv ... alworm.htm

(2) Is it safe to work with pathogenic E. coli?
Most laboratories work with non-pathogenic E. coli, to minimize human infection. I don't think it would be safe to use pathogenic E. coli (a strain that could be harmful to humans) in your science fair project. To be sure, you should look up the rules for your fair.

Please post again if you have more questions.

Heather

I have already looked into both topics and have confirmes that it does affect mealworms and i have found a safe strain of e coli to work with so the only question i have left is how to infect them. thanks

I am not an expert on mealworms, but one way would be to put the E. coli on whatever you are feeding the worms. For your control worms, you will put the bacteria on whatever food you feed them. For the experimental worms, I suggest putting the bacteria on the same food that you feed the control worms, and then supplement the diet with acai berries.

Does that help?

Heather

it might work but mealworms are usually kept in a container of oatmeal which they eat, so would i have to evenly distribute the e coli throughout their oatmeal environment?

If you do your best to distribute the E. coli around in the oatmeal, it should work.

Remember that you should have two control groups: (1) worms that you feed oatmeal with no E. coli and (2) worms that you feed oatmeal with E. coli, but no acai berries. Your experimental group will be the worms eating oatmeal with E. coli and acai berries.

The second control will help you see what the infected worms look like, so you have a comparison to see whether the acai berries are working.

Hope that helps!

Heather