Fig. 6
From: The Akt signaling pathway is required for tissue maintenance and regeneration in planarians
Smed-AKT(RNAi) leads to a generalized reduction in the expression of genes in differentiated tissues and alterations in muscle fibers. a Gene expression analysis of differentiated tissue markers at days 10, 20 and 30 after first dsRNA injection. All measurements are relative to the their respective control. Analysis of genes related to the differentiated tissues: intestinal (porcn-1 and MAT), photoreceptors (ovo and tyrosinase), central nervous system (ChAT and pc2), and connective and muscle tissues (collagen and tropomyosin, respectively). Smed-AKT(RNAi) strongly reduce the expression of most markers except for ChAT and tropomyosin that are elevated by day 30 after RNAi. Gene expressions are all relative to the internal control, the ubiquitously expressed clone H.55.12e. Graphs represent mean ± s.e.m. of triplicated samples of two or more independent experiments with at least ten animals per experiment. Significance (*P<0.05 and ****P<0.0001) was determined with two way-ANOVA. b Whole-mount immunostaining of intact control and Smed-AKT(RNAi) planarians at >day 25 post RNAi initiation with SMED-6G10 (muscle tissue) antibody. SMED-6G10 antibody specifically labels the circular and diagonal muscle fibers throughout the animal. When compared to the control, Smed-AKT(RNAi) showed disarray in the muscle fibers in both the head (top images) and pharyngeal (bottom images) muscular structures (arrowheads). The images are representative of an experiment with five animals in one biological replicate. Scale bar 200 μm