Manikandan Karuppasamy
Structural biologist who used cryo-electron microscopy at EMBL Grenoble to solve the first structure of yeast TORC2, explaining why it resists rapamycin
European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Grenoble, Schaffitzel group (papers 2016–2020, at the time of the study)
TOR works in two complexes. TORC1 is blocked by rapamycin, but TORC2 is not, and for years nobody could see why. Manikandan Karuppasamy is first author of a 2017 study from Christiane Schaffitzel's group at EMBL Grenoble that solved the structure of yeast TORC2 by cryo-electron microscopy, a method that images frozen protein molecules in an electron microscope and combines many pictures into a 3D model (KAR2017). The structure showed the overall layout of the complex and that the protein Avo3 sits over the spot where rapamycin, with its partner FKBP12, would need to bind, which explains the drug's lack of effect. The work was done on purified yeast proteins.
At EMBL Grenoble Karuppasamy also helped solve the cryo-EM structure of a human 48S translation pre-initiation complex, the ribosome machinery that starts protein production (2018), and contributed to a 2020 method for imaging long non-coding RNAs by atomic force microscopy. No later position could be confirmed, so the affiliation shown is the one on the Atlas paper.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | M | Cryo-EM structure of Saccharomyces cerevisiae target of rapamycin complex 2 KAR2017 First author: solved the cryo-EM structure of yeast TORC2, revealing its architecture and the structural basis for rapamycin insensitivity. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 2
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Manikandan Karuppasamy.
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- Christiane Berger-Schaffitzel Structural biologist who uses cryo-electron microscopy to study ribosomes and translation machinery; co-senior author of the first cryo-EM structure of yeast TORC2.
- Robbie Loewith Showed, as first author in Michael Hall's lab, that yeast TOR exists as two distinct complexes, the basis of the TORC1/TORC2 framework
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