Summary We hypothesize that dosage compensation of critical genes arises from systems-level properties for cancer cells to withstand the negative effects of aneuploidy. We identified several candidate genes in cancer multiomics data and developed a biocomputational platform to construct a mathematical model of their interaction network with micro-RNAs and transcription factors, where the property of dosage compensation emerged for MYC and was dependent on the kinetic parameters of its feedback interactions with three micro-RNAs. These circuits were experimentally validated using a genetic tug-of-war technique to overexpress an exogenous MYC , leading to overexpression of the three microRNAs involved and downregulation of endogenous MYC. In addition, MYC overexpression or inhibition of its compensating miRNAs led to dosage-dependent cytotoxicity in MYC -amplified colon cancer cells. Finally, we identified negative correlation of MYC dosage compensation with patient survival in TCGA breast cancer patients, highlighting the potential of this mechanism to prevent aneuploid cancer progression.

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Cancer complexity is consequence of genomic instability leading to aneuploidy. We hypothesize that dosage compensation of critical genes arise from systems-level properties for cancer cells to withstand the negative effects of aneuploidy. We developed a computational platform to identify a network of miRNAs and transcription factors interacting with candidate dosage-compensated genes using NCI-60 multi-omic data. We next constructed a mathematical model where the property of dosage compensation emerged for MYC and STAT3 and was dependent on the kinetic parameters of their feedback and feed-forward interactions with four miRNAs. We developed a genetic tug-of-war approach by overexpressing an exogenous MYC sequence to experimentally validate MYC dosage compensation circuits as demonstrated by the over-expression of the three microRNAs involved and the respective down-regulation of endogenous MYC. In addition, MYC overexpression or inhibition of its compensating miRNAs led to dosage-dependent cytotoxicity in MYC-amplified colon cancer cells. The study of TCGA breast cancer patient data indicated that MYC dosage compensation could lead to lower patient survival, highlighting the potential of targeting gene dosage compensation to prevent aneuploid cancer progression.(BioNetUCR, available here: https://cloud.prislab.org/s/gt2W2jfZQx3E3Jm).