Fig. 3 |. Pulse-chase analysis of assimilated dFA.

Young adult C. elegans that had been fed with dFA for 12 h were placed on E. coli plates lacking dFA and examined at different chase times. a, CARS images of total lipids and dFA in the intestine and skin-like epidermis near the pharynx. The images in the third row are overlaid images of 2,845 cm⁻¹ (yellow) and 2,100 cm⁻¹ (cyan) images. Scale bar, 10μm. At a chase time of 24h, 86%of 716 epidermal lipid-rich particles identified exhibited a C–D label signal above baseline (average 2,100-cm⁻¹ intensity of >0.01). These values were derived from three independent experiments on separate animals. b, The digested dFA dissipating time (exponential decay time of the average dFA signal) for the intestine and skin-like epidermis. For chase times of 0, 8, 12, 24, 30 h, the total numbers of intestinal lipid-rich particles were 388, 293, 1,669, 634 and 875, and the total numbers of epidermal particles were 162, 160, 236, 211 and 254, respectively. The data at each time point were obtained from n = 3 biologically independent animals. The center points represent mean values and the error bars represent s.d.