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Perspectives

The TSC/Rheb/TOR Signaling Pathway in Fission Yeast and Mammalian Cells: Temperature Sensitive and Constitutive Active Mutants of TOR

Paul-Joseph Aspuria, Tatsuhiro Sato and Fuyuhiko Tamanoi

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The TSC/Rheb/TOR signaling pathway plays important roles in growth and cell cycle regulation. The main player TOR belongs to the PI3K-related protein kinase family. Recent studies utilizing fission yeast Tor2 have led to the identification of a number of amino acid changes that lead to inactivation as well as activation of TOR kinase. Also, constitutive active mutations in its upstream regulator, Rheb, have been identified. Isolation and characterization of temperature sensitive Tor2 mutants have established that this kinase functions as a key switch that determines cell fate between growth and sexual development. Introduction of Tor2 activating mutations into mTOR conferred nutrient independent activation of mTOR. Interestingly, these studies point to regions of TOR kinase important for its function.

Authors

Paul-Joseph Aspuria

University of California at Los Angeles; Los Angeles, California

Tatsuhiro Sato

University of California at Los Angeles; Los Angeles, California

Fuyuhiko Tamanoi

University of California at Los Angeles; Los Angeles, California

This is an open-access article

 Download PDF

If the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.