Cellular MYCro economics: Balancing MYC function with MYC expression

Abstract

The expression levels of the MYC oncoprotein have long been recognized to be associated with the outputs of major cellular processes including proliferation, cell growth, apoptosis, differentiation, and metabolism. Therefore, to understand how MYCoperates, it is important to define quantitatively the relationship between MYC input and expression output for its targets aswell as the higher-order relationships between the expression levels of subnetwork components and the flowof information and materials through those networks. Two different views of MYC are considered, first as a molecular microeconomic manager orchestrating specific positive and negative responses at individual promoters in collaboration with other transcription and chromatin components, and second, as a macroeconomic czar imposing an overarching rule onto all active genes. In either case, c-myc promoter output requires multiple inputs and exploits diverse mechanisms to tune expression to the appropriate levels relative to the thresholds of expression that separate health and disease. © 2013 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press; all rights reserved.