Objective To establish a method for detecting intestinal bacteria in Caenorhabditis elegans.Methods The gut flora number of 1, 20 or, 50 C.elegans was quantified and compared using real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR). Results The gut flora of a single C.elegans could be detected using qPCR method , which could also reflect the difference in the number of gut bacteria between different samples .Conclusion The qPCR method can be uased to accurately quantify intestinal bacteria even in only one C.elegans and has the advantages of low-cost, high-sensitivity and good-specificity.

Gut microbes play an important role in human health and are believed to be closely related to obesity , diabetes and some other metabolic diseases .Recently, intestinal flora has become a research hotspot and new target for disease prevention.The problems facing intestinal flora research included variability between individuals ,huge amounts and varieties of gut microbes .Caenorhabditis elegans, with the advantages of living on E.coli, short growth periods , easy observation,applicability to high throughput screening of drugs , is an ideal model organism for research of microbe-host interactions .It has been used in probiotics screening and interaction mechanism research of multifold bacteria .This review summarizes some new researches and applications in this area .