Quick Oil Red O, Paint3D and Biopython as an economical tool to measure total lipid levels in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Quick Oil Red O staining is a well established method to assay total lipid levels in Caenorhabditis elegans , but the software to clean up and analyse the images is either laborious, expensive or both. We have developed a process that uses an existing protocol to stain the animals, followed by Magic Select in Paint3D to remove background and then a custom script in Biopython to quantify average pixel intensity per animal. The software is free, accessible and relatively easy to use for undergraduate researchers.