Grace Y. Liu
Co-authored mTOR's flagship modern review directly with David Sabatini himself
PhD, MIT Department of Biology (Sabatini lab; defended 2022) · NIH F31 fellow, mTORC1 serine sensor · postdoc, Vance Lab, UC Berkeley (since 2023)
Vance Lab, University of California, Berkeley ↗
Portrait: Vance Lab, UC Berkeley
Fifth author on GU2017 (SAMTOR discovery). Her own NIH-funded PhD project tackled how mTORC1 senses serine; led to a 2024 Nature Communications paper (with Perrimon lab, Harvard) showing flies evolved an extra sensor (Unmet) for methionine.
In 2020, alongside labwork, co-authored 'mTOR at the nexus of nutrition, growth, ageing and disease' (LIU2020) directly with David Sabatini — the field's most-cited orientation document, unusual for a graduate student to co-write.
After her PhD (Nov 2022), moved to Russell Vance's lab at UC Berkeley, studying effector-triggered immunity.
Milestones in the Atlas
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | M | SAMTOR is an S-adenosylmethionine sensor for the mTORC1 pathway GU2017 Contributed to establishing SAMTOR as the S-adenosylmethionine sensor linking methionine metabolism to mTORC1. |
| 2020 | R | mTOR at the nexus of nutrition, growth, ageing and disease LIU2020 Co-authored, with David Sabatini, the field's flagship modern review. |