Zixin Sang
Chemical biologist at SUSTech in Shenzhen who used a light-activated methionine probe to identify PKM2 as a methionine sensor for mTORC1
Department of Chemistry, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Catalysis and State Key Laboratory of Medical Proteomics, Southern University of Science and Technology (2026, at the time of the study)
Zixin Sang is first author of the Atlas study SANG2026, from Jie Wang's group in the Department of Chemistry at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen. mTORC1, the growth-control complex, only runs when amino acids are available, and cells have dedicated sensor proteins that report each amino acid. For methionine the known sensor, SAMTOR, does not read methionine itself but a product made from it, S-adenosylmethionine (SAM). Whether any protein reads free methionine directly was an open question.
Sang and colleagues built a "Trojan" methionine: a copy of the amino acid that cells take up normally but that carries a chemical group which, when hit with light, links the probe to whatever protein is holding it. Fishing out these proteins with chemoproteomics, a method that identifies protein targets of small molecules on a large scale, pointed to PKM2. PKM2 is best known as a glycolysis enzyme, but here it bound methionine through a separate pocket, independently of its enzyme activity, and passed the signal to mTORC1 through the GATOR2 complex. The work was done in cultured cells and complements SAMTOR rather than replacing it.
PubMed lists Sang at the Department of Chemistry, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Catalysis and State Key Laboratory of Medical Proteomics at SUSTech. No other papers or an official page could be tied to this person, so the profile rests on this study.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | M | "Trojan" Methionine Probe Reveals PKM2 as a Methionine-Sensing Protein in the mTORC1 Pathway SANG2026 First author: used a photo-crosslinking methionine probe and chemoproteomics to show that PKM2 binds methionine and relays it to mTORC1 through GATOR2. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 2
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Zixin Sang.
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- Jiaqi Zhao Co-author; chemical biologist who helped build a chemical probe revealing a glycolytic enzyme's secret second job as a methionine sensor for mTORC1.
- Jie Wang Corresponding author of a 2026 JACS paper identifying PKM2 as a direct methionine-sensing protein that signals into mTORC1 via GATOR2.
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