The Hippo Pathway Proteins Antibody Sampler Kit provides an economical means of detecting proteins that have been identified as upstream regulators of the Hippo Signaling Pathway. The kit provides enough antibody to perform two western blot experiments with each primary antibody.

The Hippo Signaling Pathway is an evolutionarily conserved signaling cascade that regulates cell, tissue and organ growth in response to diverse environmental cues, including cell density, mechanical stress, growth factors and cytokines, and metabolic signaling (1,2). In mammals, the core components of this pathway are YAP and TAZ, transcriptional co-activators that regulate the expression of target genes that control cell proliferation and survival (3). The transcriptional control of YAP/TAZ target genes is regulated through a complex kinase cascade involving mammalian sterile-20-like kinases (MST1/2), LATS1/2 kinases and key adaptor proteins. Phosphorylation of YAP and TAZ by LATS kinases results in cytoplasmic sequestration of YAP and TAZ, inhibiting transcriptional activation of their target genes. A number of proteins have been identified that function upstream of MST1/2 and LATS1/2 to influence LATS-mediated phosphorylation of YAP/TAZ. These include the tumor suppressor protein Merlin (4), the FERM-domain containing protein 6 (FRMD6/Willin) (5), the LIM-domain containing adaptor protein Ajuba (6,7), and the protein tyrosine phosphatase PTPN14 (8).