Robert R. Latek
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
Executive Director, Global Brand Lead, Boehringer Ingelheim · Bioinformatics Scientist, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (2001–2005) · contributed to the Sabatini lab's founding mTOR-complex papers (2002–2004)
Portrait: The Illio 1993, University of Illinois (via Internet Archive)
Robert Latek was part of the Whitehead Institute team in David Sabatini's lab that, across three papers between 2002 and 2004, worked out the core protein composition of the mTOR complexes: first raptor, mTOR's partner in the nutrient-sensitive complex now called mTORC1; then GbetaL (mLST8), a third subunit that stabilizes the raptor-mTOR interaction; and then rictor, defining the separate, rapamycin-insensitive complex mTORC2.
Together with colleagues including Do-Hyung Kim, Dos Sarbassov and Siraj Ali, this run of papers gave the field its first parts list for the two mTOR complexes — the biochemical scaffolding that essentially all subsequent mTOR signalling research has built on.
Latek's role in those papers reflects his position at the Institute: he was on Whitehead's bioinformatics staff (Bioinformatics Scientist, then Senior Bioinformatics Scientist, 2001–2005), building expression, promoter and protein-structure analyses for Institute faculty rather than running a bench of his own. After Whitehead he moved into pharmaceutical development — more than a decade at Bristol-Myers Squibb in discovery medicine and immuno-oncology clinical research, then Kyowa Kirin, and since 2021 Boehringer Ingelheim, where he is now Executive Director and Global Brand Lead in oncology (career details from his public LinkedIn profile; no institutional portrait is available).
The timeline below follows Latek'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 Co-authors the discovery that raptor forms a nutrient-sensitive complex with mTOR that signals to the cell-growth machinery, one of the two 2002 papers (with Hara et al.) that first described mTORC1; Loewith et al. described the yeast TOR complexes the same year. |
| 2003 | M | GbetaL, a positive regulator of the rapamycin-sensitive pathway required for the nutrient-sensitive interaction between raptor and mTOR KIM2003 Co-authors the identification of GbetaL (mLST8) as a positive regulator that stabilizes the raptor-mTOR interaction. |
| 2004 | M | Rictor, a novel binding partner of mTOR, defines a rapamycin-insensitive and raptor-independent pathway that regulates the cytoskeleton SAR2004 Co-authors the discovery of rictor, defining a rapamycin-insensitive, raptor-independent mTOR complex (mTORC2) that controls the cytoskeleton. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 7
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Robert R. Latek.
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- David M. Sabatini 3 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
- 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
- Dos D. Sarbassov 3 shared studies 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
- 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
- Siraj M. Ali 3 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
- David A. Guertin Built the mouse genetics that defined mTORC2's biological roles
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