Michael Hall Explains How TOR Controls Cell Growth, From Yeast Rapamycin Mutants to Human Disease

Michael Hall explains that TOR, a highly conserved protein kinase first identified in 1991 through yeast mutants resistant to rapamycin, controls cell growth by size and mass rather than cell-cycle G1 progression. Rapamycin exerts toxicity as a complex with FKBP12 binding specific sites on TOR. TORC1 and TORC2 are conserved from yeast to humans, and TOR dysregulation links to cancer, cardiac hypertrophy, obesity and type 2 diabetes, with metformin partly acting through TOR inhibition.