Murine Model of Sepsis Treatment

BALB/cByJ mice (8–10 week-old females; Charles River Laboratories) were weighed and randomly distributed into groups of 9–10 animals of equal mean body weight. Mice were injected i.p. with 1.1 × 10⁵ CFU E. coli O18 (Ciarlo et al., 2016 (link)). Two minutes after bacterial challenge, mice were injected i.p. with PBS, TAT-RasGAP_317−326 diluted in PBS or ceftriaxone as described in the figure legends. Mice were monitored at least twice daily to register severity scores, body weight, and survival as described (Roger et al., 2013 (link)). Blood samples were harvested from the facial vein for quantification of circulating bacteria. Survival curves were generated using the Kaplan-Meier method and differences were analyzed by the log-rank sum test. Statistical differences for bacterial blood counts were assessed using the non-parametric Mann–Whitney test. Analyses were performed using PRISM (GraphPad Software). All reported P-values are two-sided and values of <0.05 were considered to indicate statistical significance.