Figure 5. TOR Acts in Differentiating CCs to Suppress Autophagy.

(A–A’’’) Representative IF of a testis tip from flies expressing the GFP:mCherry:Atg8a probe. Red arrows point to mCherry⁺-only APs, and yellow arrows point to GFP⁺/mCherry⁺ APs.

(B) Quantification of autophagic structures in the noted genotypes (all with c587^TS). Blue asterisks represent statistical information compared to control. Numbers on each bar color represent the mean number of autophagic structures per testis tip (n = 10 testis per condition). Control data reproduced from Figure 1F for comparison.

C–J) Examples of testes from 5-day-old control animals (C and D) and from animals expressing c587^ts > Atg1^RNAi (E and F), c587^ts > Atg8a^RNAi (G and H), or c587^ts > Atg5^RNAi (I and J) that were either fed a RD (C, E, G, and I) or food containing RAPA for 5 days (D, F, H, and J). White arrows point to TJ⁺/Eya⁻ early CCs, and green arrows point to TJ⁺/Eya⁺ CCs.

(K) Quantification of numbers of early CCs (TJ⁺/Eya⁻) in the genotypes shown in (C)–(J).

(L) Quantification of the numbers of early CCs in animals of the noted genotypes. Single UAS-based transgenes were paired with UAS-TdTomato for consideration of Gal4/UAS-levels.

In all images, asterisks (*) denote the hub; scale bars, 20 mm. For (B), Fisher’s exact was used. For (K) and (L), two-tailed t tests were used; error bars represent standard deviation. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p > 0.001, ****p < 0.0001; n.s., not significant.