Fig. 10

Gene perturbations that affect cell death and survival of larval abdominal muscles during metamorphosis. Larval persistent muscles undergo remodeling to adult temporary muscles, which involves atrophy, nuclear migration and hypertrophy. We identified gene perturbations that specifically cause premature cell death of persistent muscles without affecting the survival of newly formed adult muscles. TOR and Rm62 protect DIOMs from fragmentation into sarcolytes in early pupation. In mid-pupation, Cp1 prevents a different type of cell death that involves leakage and/or lysis of fluorescent proteins. Silencing of AMPKα induces detachment, loss of tubular morphology and ablation of muscle spheroids. Doomed muscles undergo histolysis during and right after HE, which can be delayed by overexpression of dominant negative (DN) TOR, a fragment of the east gene and Atro RNAi. In addition, Atro RNAi is the only gene perturbation so far that promotes survival of a subset of DEOMs until adulthood