Figure 5.

Rictor Deletion in Endothelial Cells Fails to Cause Spontaneous Pulmonary Hypertension

Endothelial-specific conditional and inducible KO of Rictor fails to attenuates hypoxia-induced pulmonary hypertension in Rictor^EC−/− mice. (A) Schematic strategy for the generation of EC-specific Rictor-KO mice (Rictor^EC−/−) and the timeline indicating the time for Tam injection and experimental measurements. (B) Representative record of RVP (a) and summarized data (mean ± SE) showing the peak value of RVSP (b) (Kruskal-Wallis test, p < 0.001) and the Fulton index (RV/[LV + S]) ratio (c) (Kruskal-Wallis test, p < 0.001) in WT and Rictor^EC−/− mice exposed to normoxia and hypoxia (for 3 weeks). Dunn test, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001 versus Normoxia-WT. (C) Representative hematoxylin and eosin images of the cross-section of small PA (a) and summarized data (mean ± SE) showing the PA wall thickness in WT and Rictor^EC−/− mice under normoxic and hypoxic conditions (b). The numbers of experiments or samples (n) for each group are indicated in each bar. Abbreviations as in Figure 1.