TY - JOUR T1 - The role of TORC1 in muscle development in Drosophila JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/010991 SP - 010991 AU - Isabelle Hatfield AU - Innocence Harvey AU - Lawrence T. Reiter AU - Dave Bridges Y1 - 2014/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/11/02/010991.abstract N2 - Myogenesis is an important process during both development and muscle repair. Previous studies suggest that mTORC1 plays a role in the formation of mature muscle from immature muscle precursor cells. Here we show that gene expression for several myogenic transcription factors including Myf5, Myog and Mef2c but not MyoD decreases when C2C12 cells are treated with rapamycin, implying a role for mTORC1 pathway during muscle development. To investigate the possibility that mTORC1 can regulate muscle in vivo we ablated the essential mTORC1 subunit Raptor in Drosophila melanogaster and found that muscle-specific ablation of Raptor causes flies to be too weak to emerge from their pupal cases during eclosion. Furthermore, we found that there is a critical period post-eclosure when Raptor ablation causes lethality in flies. Together these results highlight an important new role for mTORC1 in late muscle development, integrity or function. ER -