All animal use was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the University of Minnesota. Efforts were made to minimize the pain and discomfort of the animals throughout the study. Adult mice were housed on a 12 h light/dark cycle, with food and water available ad libitum. The generation of Girk−/− was described previously (Signorini et al. 1997; Bettahi et al. 2002; Torrecilla et al. 2002). The Girk null mutations were backcrossed through >12 rounds against the C57BL/6 strain prior to experimentation.
