Fig. 2.

Knocking down Babo or Smox either ubiquitously or in adult muscle tissues tends to shorten the mean life span. (A,B) Ubiquitous expression of a UAS-Babo RNAi transgene through a Tub-Gal4 driver in adult fruit flies shortened the mean life span of female and male fruit flies by about 24% or 15 days (P<0.05). (C,D) Ubiquitous knockdown of Smox proteins in adult fruit flies only moderately affected the ageing of female fruit flies (about 11% or 7.5 days mean life span reduction) (P<0.05) (C) but not the male fruit flies (D). (E,F) Muscle-specific expression of a Babo RNAi reduced the mean life span of these fruit flies very subtly. (G,H) Expression of a Smox RNAi in adult fruit fly muscle tissues resulted in a reduction of the mean life span of the female fruit flies by 6 days while for male fruit flies, the life span reduction by the expression of the Smox RNAi in muscle tissues is very minimum. In A to H, blue lines are survivorship curves of Babo or Smox knockdown fruit flies; red and green lines are survivorship curves of control fruit flies.