Ming-Yuan Su
Structural biologist who solved cryo-EM structures of lysosomal complexes in James Hurley's lab at UC Berkeley and now leads cryo-EM studies of mTORC1 regulators as corresponding author at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen
Department of Biochemistry, SUSTech Homeostatic Medicine Institute and Institute for Biological Electron Microscopy, School of Medicine, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen (papers from 2021) · Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, University of California, Berkeley (Hurley lab, papers 2017–2021)
Ming-Yuan Su was first author of SUX2017, a 2017 Molecular Cell paper from James Hurley's lab at UC Berkeley. mTORC1, the growth-control complex, is recruited to the lysosome by the Rag GTPases, which sit on a scaffold called Ragulator. The paper combined several structural methods into a 'hybrid' model of the RagA/C-Ragulator complex, giving one of the first detailed pictures of this docking station. It is a protein-level study, which later work built on to explain how nutrients flip the Rag switch.
Su stayed with structures of lysosome-linked machines. As first author of a 2020 Nature paper, Su solved the cryo-EM structure of the C9orf72-SMCR8-WDR41 complex, which is reduced in some forms of ALS and frontotemporal dementia, and showed that it acts as a GTPase-activating protein for ARF proteins. A 2021 Nature Communications paper explained how this activity works and offered a model for related switches, FLCN and NPRL2, that control the Rag GTPases.
Since 2021 PubMed lists Su in the Department of Biochemistry at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen, as corresponding author. The group's cryo-EM work there includes structures of GATOR2 bound to the amino acid sensors CASTOR1 and Sestrin2 (2025), of the KICSTOR and GATOR1-KICSTOR complexes that anchor an mTORC1 brake on the lysosome (2025, with Chun-Yan Lim), and of ubiquitin ligase complexes such as DDB1-AMBRA1 (2023) and COP1-DET1 (2026).
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | M | Hybrid Structure of the RagA/C-Ragulator mTORC1 Activation Complex SUX2017 First author: built the hybrid structural model of the RagA/C-Ragulator complex that docks mTORC1 on the lysosome. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 3
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Ming-Yuan Su.
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- Do Jin Kim Structural biologist, now at Denali Therapeutics, who worked in James Hurley's lab at UC Berkeley on the protein machines of autophagy and on the Rag-Ragulator complex that brings mTORC1 to the lysosome
- James H. Hurley Structural biologist who uses cryo-EM to show how protein machines assembled on membranes control autophagy and nutrient signalling. His lab solved structures of the Rag–Ragulator complex and of the whole mTORC1–TFEB–Rag–Ragulator assembly on the lysosome
- Roberto Zoncu Showed as a postdoc that mTORC1 senses amino acids from inside the lysosome, through the v-ATPase and Ragulator. His Berkeley lab has since mapped how the Rag GTPases and the folliculin complex switch mTORC1 on, and how lysosomal cholesterol feeds into the same system
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