Ricerc@Sapienza

Hippo signaling has been recognized as a key tumor suppressor pathway. Here, we perform a comprehensive molecular characterization of 19 Hippo core genes in 9,125 tumor samples across 33 cancer types using multidimensional “omic” data from The Cancer Genome Atlas. We identify somatic drivers among Hippo genes and the related microRNA (miRNA) regulators, and using functional genomic approaches, we experimentally characterize YAP and TAZ mutation effects and miR-590 and miR-200a regulation for TAZ.

Protein ubiquitination is a dynamic and reversibleprocess of adding single ubiquitin molecules orvarious ubiquitin chains to target proteins. Here,using multidimensional omic data of 9,125 tumorsamples across 33 cancer types from The CancerGenome Atlas, we perform comprehensive molecu-lar characterization of 929 ubiquitin-related genesand 95 deubiquitinase genes. Among them, we sys-tematically identify top somatic driver candidates,including mutatedFBXW7with cancer-type-specificpatterns and amplifiedMDM2showing a mutuallyexclusive pattern withBRAFmutations.