Building Blocks of the most Luminous Galaxies

Nearby luminous galaxies serve as templates to gain insight into the building blocks of the most luminous galaxies in the distant universe. In this conference I have shown that the most luminous galaxies in the Local Universe are mergers of evolved gas-rich galaxies that radiate the bulk of their energy in the mid and far-infrared. The most important implication for future studies on the formation of galaxies at early cosmological timescales is that they will appear as luminous sub-millimeter sources.