Anne Brunet
Showed that Akt directly phosphorylates and controls FOXO, the transcription-factor switch linking insulin/IGF-1 signaling to lifespan
Michele and Timothy Barakett Endowed Professor of Genetics, Stanford University · Director, Paul F. Glenn Laboratories for the Biology of Aging · Postdoctoral Fellow, Michael E. Greenberg Lab, Harvard Medical School (1998–2003) · PhD, University of Nice (1997)
Brunet Lab, Stanford (Stanford, California, USA) ↗ Lab lineagetrained under Michael E. Greenberg → Bluesky@brunetlab.bsky.social ↗
Portrait: Stanford Profiles
Anne Brunet's defining early discovery came as a postdoc in Michael Greenberg's lab at Harvard, where she showed that Akt — the kinase that sits immediately upstream of mTORC1 in the insulin/IGF-1 pathway — directly phosphorylates the Forkhead transcription factor FKHRL1, a FOXO-family protein. Phosphorylation locks FOXO in the cytoplasm, bound to 14-3-3 proteins; when survival signals fall away, FOXO is released, moves into the nucleus, and switches on a cell-death gene program. That 1999 finding, reported alongside related work from other groups, helped give the Akt-to-FOXO step of the pathway its mechanism, and set the direction for the career Brunet has built at Stanford since 2004: how the same nutrient- and growth-factor-sensing pathways that converge on mTORC1 set the pace of aging, using models that range from cultured neurons to the short-lived African killifish.
The 1999 paper was co-authored with John Blenis, already featured elsewhere in this Atlas for his work defining mTORC1's S6K1 and 4E-BP1 output — putting two of the Atlas's researchers on the same paper just as the pathway's upstream arm (Akt acting on FOXO) and downstream arm (mTORC1 acting on S6K1) were each taking shape. The connection is still active: Atlas event records list Brunet as an invited speaker alongside Sabatini, Hall, Manning and Shaw at the Prague Metabolism and Signaling Symposium 2026, the same circle of researchers whose foundational studies anchor this Atlas.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 1999 | M | Akt promotes cell survival by phosphorylating and inhibiting a Forkhead transcription factor BRU1999 Shows that Akt phosphorylates the FOXO transcription factor FKHRL1, locking it in the cytoplasm and blocking its cell-death gene program, one of several 1999 studies linking Akt/insulin-IGF-1 signalling to FOXO. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Anne Brunet.
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- John Blenis Showed early on that rapamycin blocks S6 kinase, then worked out how mTORC1 drives cell growth through its two main translation targets, S6K1 and 4E-BP1. His lab also found, in parallel with the Sabatini lab, that mTORC1 phosphorylates Grb10, a feedback brake on insulin signalling
Every researcher with a profile →
On the programme
Meetings in the Atlas calendar where Anne Brunet is listed among the speakers or organisers.
- past Prague Metabolism and Signaling Symposium 2026 ↗ 24–27 Jun 2026 ·
Prague, Czech Republic · ★★★ - past Keystone Symposia: Aging – Immune Function and Organ Health 2026 ↗ 22–25 Mar 2026 ·
Banff, AB, Canada · ★★
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