The genetic basis of the long-term maintenance of muscle function in animals.

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The overall goal of my research is to understand how tissues form and once they form how they maintain their organization throughout the life of the organism. In particular my lab utilizes genetic approaches to dissect various mechanism ensure tissues are able to maintain their structure and thus their ability to function throughout life. Muscle cells are particularly interesting in this regard because they are both highly organized structurally and relatively long lived, meaning that they sustain their structural integrity for a long time. This is remarkable because muscle withstand enormous mechanical loads as the undergo cycles of relaxation and contraction. The NSERC funded research program I propose will investigate the how muscle cells are able to maintain their organization and function throughout the life of the organism while under sustained mechanical strain. Our lab uses fly muscles for our experiments since they provide an excellent, genetically tractable, in vivo model system to study muscle maintenance in the context of the whole organism. The adult musculuature of the fly is maintained for the duration of fly life, typically 4-6 weeks during during which no additional muscle cells are made. A key aim of our research is to use genetics to identify genes that are involved in muscle tissue maintenance. Previously, the main obstacle in achieving this goal has been that the complete abolition of genes that are involved in muscle maintenance often interferes with the formation of muscles in the embryo. We have recently developed a way to circumvent this problem by using novel genetic tools. We have used this approach coupled with assays that measure muscle function in the adult to screen for genes that are required for muscle tissue maintenance. We identified over 3 dozen genes that are essential to maintain muscle function in the adult muscles. My NSERC application details a set of experiments designed to obtain a thorough mechanistic understanding of how the genes identified in our screen contribute to muscle tissue maintenance.