Figure 3. mTOR is essential for NK cell reactivity.
(A) Percentage (mean +SD) of CD107a+ cells among splenic CD11blo NK cells of the indicated subset from Ncr1iCre/+ or Ncr1iCre/+ Mtorlox/lox mice following 4 hr stimulation with coated anti-NK1.1 or YAC-1 cells (n = 5 mice of each genotype in three independent experiments, t-tests comparing each subset in both genotype, *p<0.05, **p<0.01, n.s. non significant). (B) Percentage (mean +SD) of IFN-γ+ or CD107a+ cells among splenic NK cells of the indicated subset from C57BL/6 or B2m−/− mice following 4 hr stimulation with coated anti-NK1.1 in the presence or absence of 250 nM Torin2 (n = 9–10 mice of each genotype in five independent experiments, two-way ANOVA comparing each subset to its counterpart in B2m−/− mice, *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001, n.s. non significant). (C) Percentage (mean +SD) of dead YAC-1 cells after a 4 hr co-culture with purified NK cells of the indicated genotype at the indicated Effector/Target ratio in the presence or absence of 250 nM Torin2 (n = 9 C57BL/6 and 7 B2m−/− mice in four independent experiments, two-way ANOVA comparing each E/T ratio of C57BL/6 + Torin2 to C57BL/6, B2m−/− or B2m−/− +Torin2 as indicated by the color, ***p<0.001, n.s. non significant). (D) Percentage of remaining B2m−/− target cells following in vivo cytotoxicity experiment as described in the Materials and methods. Each dot represents a single mouse, bars indicate mean and SD (n = 9 control treated mice and 7 Torin2 treated mice in two independent experiments, t-test, ***p<0.001).

