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Advances in the Mechanisms of Amino Acid Signaling in mTORC1 Pathway
Gao Yuan, Wu Geng*
State Key Laboratory of Microbial Metabolism, School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Abstract: The target of rapamycin， TOR， serves as a central hub for regulation of cell growth and metabolism. It forms two distinct structural complexes， TORC1 and TORC2， which play different roles in cells. TORC1 senses a wide range of cellular signals， from amino acids， growth factors， energy status to hypoxia， and regulates cell growth and proliferation via controlling protein synthesis. Among those signals， amino acids can not only activate TORC1 potently， but also serves as prerequisite for activation of TORC1 by other stimuli. Research took in the past decade had provided us much insight into the mechanism of how growth factors and energy status control TORC1 activity， but how cellular amino acids regulate the pathway remained mysterious until publication of several papers recently. In this review， we are going to present and summarize the results and conclusions from recent works on amino acid signaling in mTORC1 pathway， with the expectation of figuring out directions for future study.
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