Figure 6.

Intermittent rapamycin treatment had no long-lasting effect on growth as assessed by body weight measures. Wild type (WT) and NS-Pten conditional knockout (KO) male mice received either vehicle (Veh) or rapamycin (Rapa) treatment during postnatal weeks 4–5. A subset of knockout mice received additional rapamycin treatment during weeks 10–11, and 16–17. All knockouts receiving rapamycin were combined into one group up through week 10, then randomly split into Rapa KO x1 (blue) and Rapa KO x3 (red). Due to inadequate sample sizes from premature death after week 13 in the Rapa x1 and Veh knockout groups, these mice were eliminated from analyses at the later ages (n=9–24 for each group for weeks 4–7, n=3–18 for weeks 8–13, and n=5–10 for remaining treatment groups at weeks 14–21). A) Acute treatment with rapamycin during weeks 4–5 is associated with a transient decrease in the weight of knockout animals. At five weeks of age, rapamycin-treated knockouts weighed significantly less than vehicle-treated wild type controls, but not vehicle-treated knockouts. By six weeks of age, they weighed significantly less than both vehicle-treated groups. Comparisons at 18 weeks of age also revealed a significant decrease in body weight for the Rapa KO x3 group as compared to vehicle-treated wild type controls, but earlier and subsequent comparisons showed no significant difference between these groups (see Figure 7B). Sample sizes are indicated at the base of each bar. B) Rapamycin treatment had no long lasting effect on bodyweight, regardless of treatment protocol or genotype (p>0.05 across all groups at ages 7–21 weeks, except as noted in A). *p<0.05, **p<0.01.