Mice

BALB/c, C57BL/6 (B6) were purchased from the Beijing Laboratory Animal Research Center (Beijing, China). The myeloid -specific mTOR conditional knockout mice (LyzsCre-mTOR^loxp/loxp) and myeloid cell-specific rictor conditional knockout mice (LyzsCre-rictor^loxp/loxp) under C57BL/6 genetic background were obtained by crossing mTOR^loxp/loxp mice and rictor^loxp/loxp mice with mice expressing Cre recombinase under the control of the Lysozyme promoter (Lyzs-Cre) respectively^25,33. Lyzs-Cre-negative, mTOR^loxp/loxp littermates served as the wild-type (WT) control. Six-to-8-week-old mice (male and female) were usually used for the in vitro experiments. mTOR^loxp/loxp mice were kindly provided by Dr Zhongzhou Yang from Center of Model Animal Research at Nanjing University, China. Lyzs-Cre mice were kindly offered by Dr. Lianfeng Zhang, Key Laboratory of Human Diseases Comparative Medicine, Ministry of Health; Institute of Laboratory Animal Science, CAMS & PUMC. Primers used to identify genetically modified mice are described previously^25,33. All animal experiments were performed in accordance with the institutional guidelines and approval of the Animal Ethics Committee of the Institute of Zoology, Beijing, China.