Alteration of Proteotranscriptomic Landscape Reveals the Transcriptional Regulatory Circuits Controlling Key-Signaling Pathways and Metabolic Reprogramming During Tumor Evolution

The proteotranscriptomic landscape depends on the transcription, mRNA-turnover, translation, and regulated-destruction of proteins. Gene-specific mRNA-to-protein correlation is the consequence of the dynamic interplays of the different regulatory processes of proteotranscriptomic landscape. So far, the critical impact of mRNA and protein stability on their subsequent correlation on a global scale remained unresolved. Whether the mRNA-to-protein correlations are constrained by their stability and conserved across mammalian species including human is unknown. Moreover, whether the stability-dependent correlation pattern is altered in the tumor has not been explored. To establish the quantitative relationship between stability and correlation between mRNA and protein levels, we performed a multi-omics data integration study across mammalian systems including diverse types of human tissues and cell lines in a genome-wide manner. The current study illuminated an important aspect of the mammalian proteotranscriptomic landscape by providing evidence that stability-constrained mRNA-to-protein correlation follows a hierarchical pattern that remains conserved across different tissues and mammalian species. By analyzing the tumor and non-tumor tissues, we further illustrated that mRNA-to-protein correlations deviate in tumor tissues. By gene-centric analysis, we harnessed the hierarchical correlation patterns to identify altered mRNA-to-protein correlation in tumors and characterized the tumor correlation-enhancing and -repressing genes. We elucidated the transcriptional regulatory circuits controlling the correlation-enhancing and -repressing genes that are associated with metabolic reprogramming and cancer-associated pathways in tumor tissue. By tightly controlling the mRNA-to-protein correlation of specific genes, the transcriptional regulatory circuits may enable the tumor cells to evolve in varying tumor microenvironment. The mRNA-to-protein correlation analysis thus can serve as a unique approach to identify the pathways prioritized by the tumor cells at different clinical stages. The component of transcriptional regulatory circuits identified by the current study can serve as potential candidates for stage-dependent anticancer therapy.