“…In addition, inositol-trisphosphate 3-kinase B (ITPKB), a lipid kinase that produces inositol (1,3,4,5)-tetrakisphosphate [IP 4 ; Ins(1,3,4,5)P 4 ], is essential for HSC maintenance and acts by limiting AKT-mTORC1 activation (Siegemund et al, 2015); IP 4 produced by ITPKB limits the recruitment of AKT to the cell membrane by serving as a PIP 3 decoy (Siegemund et al, 2015), resulting in decreased AKT and mTORC1 activation. Itpkb deletion in mice thus causes increased mTORC1 activity and phenotypic HSC expansion, similar to Wip1 deletion (Chen et al, 2015;Siegemund et al, 2015). Similar to other HSC studies (Chen et al, 2015), rapamycin blocks phenotypic HSC expansion in Itpkb-knockout mice, reinforcing the notion that mTORC1 drives HSC proliferation (Siegemund et al, 2015).…”