Intercellular fusion among myoblasts is required for the generation of multinucleated muscle fibers during skeletal muscle development. Recent studies in Drosophila have shed light on the molecular mechanisms that underlie this process, and a signaling pathway that relays fusion signals from the cell membrane to the cytoskeleton has emerged. In this article, we review these recent advances and discuss how Drosophila offers a powerful model system to study myoblast fusion in vivo.
Department of Molecular Biology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, 6000 Harry Hines Boulevard, Dallas, TX 75390, USA. chen@hamon.swmed.edu
