Review highlights fly research contributions to understanding muscular dystrophies

Plantié E, Migocka-Patrzałek M, Daczewska M, Jagla K. Model Organisms in the Fight against Muscular Dystrophy: Lessons from Drosophila and Zebrafish. Molecules. 2015 Apr 9;20(4):6237-6253. PMID: 25859781.

Table 1 from Plantie et al. Click to view the Open Access review.

From the abstract: "Muscular dystrophies (MD) are a heterogeneous group of genetic disorders that cause muscle weakness, abnormal contractions and muscle wasting, often leading to premature death. ... Structurally, physiologically and biochemically, MDs affect different types of muscles and cause individual symptoms such that genetic and molecular pathways underlying their pathogenesis thus remain poorly understood. To improve our knowledge of how MD-caused muscle defects arise and to find efficacious therapeutic treatments, different animal models have been generated and applied. Among these, simple non-mammalian Drosophila and zebrafish models have proved most useful. This review discusses how zebrafish and Drosophila MD have helped to identify genetic determinants of MDs and design innovative therapeutic strategies with a special focus on DMD, DM1 and congenital MDs."