ABSTRACT: The molecular circadian clock, which controls rhythmic 24-hour oscillation of genes, proteins, and metabolites, is disrupted across many human cancers. Deregulated expression of MYC oncoprotein has been shown to alter expression of molecular clock genes, leading to a disruption of molecular clock oscillation across cancer types. However, it remained unclear how this loss of molecular clock oscillation impacted global gene expression and metabolism in cancer, and what benefit cancer cells might gain from suppressing clock oscillation. We hypothesized that MYC suppresses oscillation of gene expression and metabolism to instead upregulate pathways involved in biosynthesis in a static, non-oscillatory fashion. To test this, we utilized cells from distinct cancer types with inducible MYC or the closely related N-MYC to determine, using detailed time-series RNA-sequencing and metabolomics, the extent to which MYC activation disrupts global oscillation of genes, gene expression, programs, and metabolites. We focused our analyses on genes, pathways, and metabolites that changed in common across multiple cancer cell line models. We report here that MYC disrupted over 85% of oscillating genes, while instead promoting enhanced ribosomal and mitochondrial biogenesis and suppressed cell attachment pathways. Notably, when MYC is activated, biosynthetic programs that were formerly circadian flipped to being upregulated in an oscillation-free manner. Further, activation of MYC ablates the oscillation of nutrient transporter glycosylation while greatly upregulating transporter expression, cell surface localization, and intracellular amino acid pools. Finally, we report that MYC disrupts metabolite oscillations and the temporal segregation of amino acid metabolism from nucleotide metabolism. Our results demonstrate that MYC disruption of the molecular circadian clock releases metabolic and biosynthetic processes from circadian control, which may provide a distinct advantage to cancer cells.
