Figure 1.

Reduced Body Mass in Neonatal Mice Induced by GDF11 Overexpression

(A) AAV9-GDF11 and AAV9-GDF11-Pro-Fc-1 vector design. The DNA gene sequence encoding for human GDF11 or human Fc-conjugated GDF11 propeptide wAS cloned into an AAV expression vector after a cytomegalovirus early enhancer/chicken β-actin (CAG) promoter with a polyadenylation signal. The entire sequence is flanked by two AAV inverted terminal repeats (ITRs). (B) Body weight of pups 10 days after treatment with 5 × 10¹¹ vg AAV9-GDF11 or PBS control (n = 5). (C) Representative immunofluorescence sections from 14-day-old neonatal heart and liver sections stained for GDF11 (red). Scale bars, 50 μm. All error bars represent mean ± SEM. ***p < 0.001.