Rictor Conditional Knockout mouse models

Defining mTOR complex 2, Rictor is the ortholog of human RICTOR and encodes a large scaffold that, with mSIN1 and mLST8, confers substrate specificity for the hydrophobic motifs of AKT Ser473, SGK1 and conventional PKC isoforms, alongside a turn motif phosphorylation that stabilizes nascent AGC kinases. Unlike mTORC1, the complex resists acute rapamycin but is disassembled by prolonged exposure, which makes genetic ablation the only clean way to separate mTORC2 from pharmacologically confounded mTORC1 readouts. Germline deletion is embryonic lethal at midgestation, so conditional nulls with tissue-restricted Cre drivers are required, and running matched Rptor conditional cohorts is the standard way to attribute a phenotype to one complex rather than to the kinase itself. No paralog substitutes, though the accessory subunits Protor-1 and Protor-2 tune substrate selection, so interpret residual SGK1 signaling carefully when the endpoint is renal sodium handling or metabolic control.

Tissue restricted knockout of Rictor keeps wild type function everywhere else. Breeding is often more robust, and the setup mirrors patient biology where mutations arise in a subset of cells.