Fig. 7.

Starvation-induced autophagy activities do not alter the levels of ubiquitinated protein aggregates in our control and experimental fruit flies. (A-F) FK2 antibody staining results for ubiquitinated protein aggregates (red dots) from the thoracic muscle tissues of 20-day-old female control (A,B,D) and experimental fruit flies (C,E,F) that were starved for 24 h before the staining was done. All muscle tissues for this panel were counter stained with CytoPainter Phalloidin-iFluor 488 (green). Note that starvation itself did not alter the levels of ubiquitinated protein aggregates in thoracic muscle fibers of different genotypes of fruit flies (A-F) when they were compared to those of non-starved fruit flies of the same genotypes as shown in Fig. 5. High levels of protein aggregates are still seen in thoracic muscle of Smox knockdown fruit flies (Mhc-Gal4/UAS-Smox RNAi) (C). Starvation did not change the reduced levels of ubiquitinated protein aggregates caused by over-expression of Daw in fly muscle tissues (E,F) either.