Figure 6.

YAP/TAZ-regulated transcriptional events correlate with OSCC tumor grade and stage. (A) Microarrays were performed from samples isolated from SCC2 cells transiently transfected with control siRNA (siCTL) or siRNA targeting TAZ (siTAZ), YAP (siYAP), or YAP and TAZ (siYAP/TAZ). Hierarchical clustering of the top 3000 genes with the highest median absolute deviation is shown. The number of up- and down-regulated genes (genes with adjusted p-value ≤0.05 and fold-change ≥2 compared to the control) that were identified from our microarray study is shown below. We tested for the enrichment of the YAP- and TAZ-regulated expression changes in the TCGA data by GSEA. The results for our analysis of (B) adjacent epithelium (AE) versus tumor grade and (C) tumor stages are summarized (enrichment nominal p-values reported). OSCC tumor grade and tumor stage data obtained from TCGA was projected onto (D) the entire YAP/TAZ-regulated expression signature identified from our microarray studies, or (E) only the YAP/TAZ-activated expression signature, and a heat map of the clustered data is shown. Two notable YAP/TAZ-activated gene clusters were identified, and selected data from our pathway enrichment analysis of these genes are shown on the right.