Functional characterizations of the Hippo pathway effectors YAP and TAZ

The Hippo pathway plays an important role in regulating tissue homeostasis, and its effectors YAP and TAZ are responsible for mediating the vast majority of its physiological functions. Although YAP and TAZ are thought to be largely redundant and similarly regulated by Hippo signaling, they have developmental, structural, and physiological differences which suggest there may be differences in their regulation and downstream functions. To better understand the functions of YAP and TAZ in the Hippo pathway, we generated knockout cells and evaluated them in response to many conditions and stimuli. Here, we used RNA-seq to identify and compare differences in the transcriptional profiles between the YAP and TAZ. The overall goal is to examine expression changes under baseline starvation condtions and in response to LPA stimulation. mRNA profiles of wild type (WT), YAP KO, TAZ KO, and YAP/TAZ-dKO HEK293A cells were generated using deep sequencing with three biological replicates.