Steven P. Gygi
Co-built BioPlex, the mass-spectrometry-based map of the human protein-interaction network
PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology (mass spectrometry), University of Utah · postdoc, University of Washington (Ruedi Aebersold lab, from 1996) · own lab, Harvard Medical School (since 2000) · now Professor of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School; faculty director, Taplin Biological Mass Spectrometry Facility and the Thermo Fisher Center for Multiplexed Proteomics
Gygi Lab, Harvard Medical School ↗
Gygi's lab supplied the identification step behind the Atlas's two BioPlex-derived nutrient-sensor papers: after Wade Harper's group immunoprecipitated a tagged 'bait' protein out of cells, it was Gygi's mass spectrometers that identified every protein sticking to it, repeated across thousands of different baits to build BioPlex. That pipeline is what put CASTOR1 (then an obscure gene, GATSL3) on a list of GATOR2-interacting proteins in 2016, and what flagged SAMTOR (then C7orf60) as a GATOR1/KICSTOR partner in 2017 — both times before anyone knew these proteins bound a nutrient at all. Screens at that scale exist mainly because Gygi's group has spent two decades making quantitative mass spectrometry faster, more sensitive, and multiplexable.
Gygi earned his PhD at the University of Utah on small-molecule mass spectrometry, then did a postdoctoral fellowship (from 1996) with Ruedi Aebersold at the University of Washington, one of the labs that founded modern quantitative proteomics. Since starting his own lab at Harvard Medical School in 2000, Gygi has been a driving force behind Tandem Mass Tag (TMT) multiplexing, which lets many samples be compared in a single mass-spec run, and more recently TMTpro, which pushed that to 16 samples at once.
He now directs two HMS core mass-spectrometry facilities — the Taplin Biological Mass Spectrometry Facility and the Thermo Fisher Center for Multiplexed Proteomics — that generate proteomic and interactome data used throughout cancer biology, neuroscience, and cell biology well beyond his own lab's projects.
Milestones in the Atlas
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | M | The CASTOR Proteins Are Arginine Sensors for the mTORC1 Pathway CHA2016 Performed the mass-spectrometry identification behind BioPlex that first showed the uncharacterized protein GATSL3 (CASTOR1) co-purifying with the GATOR2 complex. |
| 2017 | M | SAMTOR is an S-adenosylmethionine sensor for the mTORC1 pathway GU2017 Performed the mass-spectrometry profiling behind the expanded BioPlex network that identified the uncharacterized protein C7orf60 (SAMTOR) as a GATOR1/KICSTOR interactor. |