Identification of a new stem cell population which generates Drosophila flight muscles

Abstract
Article and author information
Metrics

Abstract

How myoblast populations are regulated for the formation of muscles of different sizes is an essentially unanswered question. The large flight muscles of Drosophila develop from adult muscle progenitor (AMP) cells set-aside embryonically. The thoracic segments are all allotted the same small AMP number, while those associated with the wing-disc proliferate extensively to give rise to over 2500 myoblasts. An initial amplification occurs through symmetric divisions and is followed by a switch to asymmetric divisions in which the AMPs self-renew and generate post-mitotic myoblasts. Notch signaling controls the initial amplification of AMPs, while the switch to asymmetric division additionally requires Wingless, which regulates Numb expression in the AMP lineage. In both cases, the epidermal tissue of the wing imaginal disc acts as a niche expressing the ligands Serrate and Wingless. The disc-associated AMPs are a novel muscle stem cell population that orchestrates the early phases of adult flight muscle development.

Article and author information

Author details

Rajesh D Gunage

National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Heinrich Reichert

University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
K VijayRaghavan

National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India

For correspondence
vijay@ncbs.res.in

Competing interests
K VijayRaghavan, Senior editor, eLife.

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.