Dos D. Sarbassov
Discovered rictor as a Sabatini-lab postdoc, in parallel with Michael Hall's lab, defining mTOR Complex 2, and showed that this complex is the long-sought kinase that phosphorylates Akt on serine 473. He also found that prolonged rapamycin treatment can block mTORC2 assembly
Professor of Biology, Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan · formerly Dept. of Molecular & Cellular Oncology, MD Anderson Cancer Center · Postdoc, Whitehead Institute/MIT (Sabatini lab)
Faculty profile, Nazarbayev University (Astana, Kazakhstan) ↗ Lab lineagetrained under David M. Sabatini → ORCID0000-0002-6848-1133 ↗
Dos Sarbassov trained as a postdoc in David Sabatini's lab, where he identified rictor (rapamycin-insensitive companion of mTOR), the protein that defines mTOR Complex 2 — a second mTOR machine, distinct from mTORC1, that is largely insensitive to short-term rapamycin treatment and instead controls the actin cytoskeleton.
Sarbassov then showed that mTORC2 directly phosphorylates Akt/PKB on serine 473, identifying mTORC2 as a missing kinase in the insulin-signalling pathway with direct relevance to cancer and metabolic disease. He continued this line of work as a faculty member in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center.
The timeline below follows Sarbassov's contributions gathered in this Atlas.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2002 | M | mTOR interacts with raptor to form a nutrient-sensitive complex that signals to the cell growth machinery KIM2002 Discovery of Raptor as the defining partner of mTOR in mTORC1. This is the paper that gives mTORC1 its identity: Raptor is the scaffold that lets mTOR find and phosphorylate its targets (S6K1), and the complex is stabilized under starvation. Companion paper to Hara 2002. |
| 2003 | M | GbetaL, a positive regulator of the rapamycin-sensitive pathway required for the nutrient-sensitive interaction between raptor and mTOR KIM2003 Discovered mLST8 (GbetaL), the third core subunit that clamps onto mTOR's kinase domain and stabilizes the complex. It fine-tunes how tightly Raptor holds mTOR in response to nutrients - a small but essential cog that later turned out to be especially critical for the mTORC2 complex. |
| 2004 | M | Rictor, a novel binding partner of mTOR, defines a rapamycin-insensitive and raptor-independent pathway that regulates the cytoskeleton SAR2004 Discovers rictor and defines mTOR Complex 2, a rapamycin-insensitive mTOR machine distinct from mTORC1. |
| 2005 | M | Phosphorylation and regulation of Akt/PKB by the rictor-mTOR complex SAR2005 Shows mTORC2 directly phosphorylates and activates Akt/PKB, wiring mTOR into insulin signalling. |
| 2006 | M | Prolonged rapamycin treatment inhibits mTORC2 assembly and Akt/PKB SAR2006 Shows prolonged rapamycin treatment can also disassemble mTORC2, revealing an unexpected additional mechanism of action for the drug. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 10
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Dos D. Sarbassov.
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- David M. Sabatini 5 shared studies Identified mTOR (as RAFT1) in 1994. His lab then mapped much of the machinery around it: raptor and rictor at the core of mTORC1 and mTORC2, the Rag–Ragulator system that docks mTORC1 on the lysosome, and the sensors that detect leucine, arginine and SAM
- Siraj M. Ali 5 shared studies Worked in the Sabatini lab on the papers that discovered raptor, mLST8 and rictor, and on the finding that the rictor-mTOR complex phosphorylates Akt. He later moved into cancer genomics and clinical diagnostics
- Do-Hyung Kim 3 shared studies Co-discovered raptor, the defining partner of mTOR in mTORC1, and then mLST8 (GbetaL) as a Sabatini-lab postdoc. His Minnesota lab identified PRAS40 as an insulin-regulated link to mTORC1 and studies how mTORC1 controls autophagy
- Hediye Erdjument-Bromage 3 shared studies Ran the mass-spectrometry analyses in Paul Tempst's lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering that identified the unknown proteins in the raptor, mLST8 and rictor purifications, and contributed the same approach to work on how ERK inactivates TSC2
- Paul Tempst 3 shared studies Developed mass-spectrometry methods for identifying proteins from tiny samples, and led the Memorial Sloan Kettering proteomics laboratory that identified the unknown partners of mTOR in the raptor, mLST8 and rictor purifications
- Robert R. Latek 3 shared studies Bioinformatics scientist at the Whitehead Institute who worked on the Sabatini-lab papers that described raptor, mLST8 (GbetaL) and rictor (raptor and rictor were reported in parallel by other labs), the core partners of mTOR in its two complexes
- David A. Guertin 2 shared studies Built the mouse genetics that defined mTORC2's biological roles
- Andrew L. Markhard Contributed, as a Sabatini-lab researcher, to the discovery that Ragulator docks mTORC1 on the lysosome, and now studies metabolite signals that tell the body it has eaten
- Peggy P. Hsu Identified, in parallel with Yonghao Yu's group, Grb10 as an mTORC1 substrate that feeds back to dampen insulin and growth-factor signalling, and now studies the earliest steps of lung cancer as a physician-scientist
- Shomit Sengupta Showed that mTORC1 controls whether the liver makes ketone bodies during fasting, and now leads biology for drug discovery at a metabolic-disease biotech
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