When mtgo^e02963 homozygous pharates are manually removed from the puparium they are able to inflate their wings and walk, although they displayed an ataxic gait; such rescued adults, as well as the rare self-eclosed adults, show a severe decrease in lifespan.

mtgo^e02963 homozygous third instar larvae exhibit a slower in self-right assays but do not show light avoidance and mechanosensory withdrawal reflex defects, as compared to controls. Both homozygotes and heterozygotes exhibit significantly more 'pauses' (i.e. rearing and head sweeps) during crawling, suggestive of abnormal olfaction, but only homozygotes exhibit impaired olfactory behavior in odor attraction assays, as compared to controls.

Both homozygous and heterozygous larvae show the following NMJ morphology, which are less severe in the heterozygous condition: axonal path-finding to target muscles appears normal but enervation is restricted to the margin between muscles; there are fewer and shorter branches; and there are fewer boutons despite a severe increase in ghost boutons; but there are no obvious microtubule cytoskeleton defects (i.e. Futsch immunostaining) in the neuron termini. In more detail, mtgo^e02963 homozygotes present a disproportionally greater reduction in bouton number in highly branched neurons (18% of boutons remaining neurons innervating muscles 6/7) compared to unbranched neurons (70% of boutons remain in neurons innervating muscles 15/16 or 5), as compared to controls. There is no significant change in the combined size of larval A2 muscles 6 and 7.

Neurotransmission across mtgo^e02963/Df(2L)ED1109 larval neuromuscular junctions shows a significantly decreased spontaneous miniature end plate potential frequency but not amplitude, a significantly decreased evoked excitatory junctional potential amplitude, and a significantly decreased quantal content, as compared to controls.

The expression of mtgo^UAS.RF under the control of Scer\GAL4^arm.PS rescues the neuromuscular defects observed in mtgo^e02963/mtgo^e02963, even leading to a significant increase in the number of boutons as compared to controls.