Serratia marcescens
The opportunistic human pathogen Serratia is also pathogenic to nematodes. In humans,
Serratia marcescens can cause meningitis, endocarditis and pyelonephritis. Like
P.aeruginosa, S. marcescens can kill C. elegans either by a toxin-mediated fast
mechanism or by a slow-pacing infection. Studying S. marcescens infection in
C. elegans (for example its virulence-altering mutations) offers several advantages
over studying this pathogens in other hosts such as mice. For instance, worms can be
cultivated in 96-well microtitre plates or 24-well culture plates and thousands of
bacterial clones can be tested on these nematodes. Considering the space and the
number of required animals, such an approach is not possible with mice (Kurz and Ewbank, 2000).