Rab11 Plays an Indispensable Role in the Differentiation and Development of the Indirect Flight Muscles in Drosophila

Rab11, an evolutionary conserved, ubiquitously expressed subfamily of small monomeric GTPase has been known to regulate diverse cellular and developmental events, by regulating the exocytotic and transcytotic events inside the cell. Our studies show that Rab11 regulates Drosophila adult myogenesis by controlling proliferation and differentiation of the Adult muscle precursors (AMPs). Blocking Rab11 in the AMPs, which fuse to form the Indirect Flight Muscles (IFMs) of fly, renders flies completely flightless and non-viable. The indirect flight musculature, comprising of the differentially patterned dorsal longitudinal muscles (DLMs) and dorsal ventral muscles (DVMs), is affected to different extents. Abrogating or knocking down normal Rab11 function results in severely disrupted IFMs. DLMs forming from larval templates are reduced in number along with a significant reduction in their fibre size. The de novo developing DVMs are frequently absent. The DLMs in Rab11 hypomorphs are highly reduced, showing as a small constricted mass in one half of the thorax. Further, Rab11 function is essential for growth of these muscles during later half of adult myogenesis, as down regulation of Rab11 in IFMs results in degenerated muscles and broken fibres. Finally, we show that loss of Rab11 activity in the AMPs result in acquisition of migratory characteristic of myoblast as they show cellular protrusion at their polar ends accompanied with loss of cell-cell contacts. Our data provide the first evidence of a trafficking protein playing an indispensable role in regulating early stages of adult muscle development.