Cancer cells, like microbes, live in complex metabolic environments. Recent evidence suggests that microbial behavior across metabolic environments is well described by simple empirical growth relationships, or growth laws. Do such empirical growth relationships also exist in cancer cells? To test this question, we develop a high-throughput approach to extract quantitative measurements of cancer cell behaviors in systematically altered metabolic environments. Using this approach, we examine relationships between growth and three frequently studied cancer phenotypes: drug-treatment survival, cell migration, and lactate overflow. Drug-treatment survival follows simple linear growth relationships, which differ quantitatively between chemotherapeutics and EGFR inhibition. Cell migration follows a weak grow-and-go growth relationship, with substantial deviation in some environments. Finally, lactate overflow is mostly decoupled from growth rate and is instead determined by the cells' ability to maintain high sugar uptake rates. Altogether, this work provides a quantitative approach for formulating empirical growth laws of cancer.

Short-chain acyl-coenzyme A esters serve as intermediate compounds in fatty acid biosynthesis, and the production of polyketides, biopolymers and other value-added chemicals. S. cerevisiae is a model organism that has been utilized for the biosynthesis of such biologically and economically valuable compounds. However, its limited repertoire of short-chain acyl-CoAs effectively prevents its application as a production host for a plethora of natural products. Therefore, we introduced biosynthetic metabolic pathways to five different acyl-CoA esters into S. cerevisiae. Our engineered strains provide the following acyl-CoAs: propionyl-CoA, methylmalonyl-CoA, n-butyryl-CoA, isovaleryl-CoA and n-hexanoyl-CoA. We established a yeast-specific metabolite extraction protocol to determine the intracellular acyl-CoA concentrations in the engineered strains. Propionyl-CoA was produced at 4-9 μM; methylmalonyl-CoA at 0.5 μM; and isovaleryl-CoA, n-butyryl-CoA, and n-hexanoyl-CoA at 6 μM each. The acyl-CoAs produced in this study are common building blocks of secondary metabolites and will enable the engineered production of a variety of natural products in S. cerevisiae. By providing this toolbox of acyl-CoA producing strains, we have laid the foundation to explore S. cerevisiae as a heterologous production host for novel secondary metabolites.