Increased expression of YAP is associated with decreased cell autophagy in the eutopic endometrial stromal cells of endometriosis

Tianjiao Pei, Xin Huang, Ying Long, Changling Duan, Chang-Ling Duan, Tingting Liu, Yujing Li, Wei Huang
Molecular and cellular endocrinology · 2019 · vol. 491 , pp. 110432 · doi:10.1016/j.mce.2019.04.012 · PMID:31014943 · W2937277327
article OA: hybrid CC0 ⤵ 9 in-corpus citations
🔓 Open OA copy View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

This study found that increased YAP expression in eutopic endometrial stromal cells from endometriosis patients is associated with decreased autophagy, potentially through the mTOR-autophagy pathway.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Basic research has shown that signal pathways play significant roles in the development and progression of endometriosis (EMS). We first reported that the Hippo-YAP (Yes-associated protein) pathway promotes cell proliferation and anti-apoptosis in endometrial stromal cells (ESCs) of EMS. Cell autophagy has been found to be involved in the endometrial regulation and the pathophysiology of EMS. We speculated that there may be an elaborate dialogue between Hippo-YAP and autophagy pathway in EMS. To explore this, we performed molecular biology experiments to investigate the expressions of YAP pathway and cell autophagy markers (mTOR, LC-3) in ESCs of women with or without EMS and detected the protein levels of autophagy markers after verteporfin and rapamycin treatments and the transfection with YAP-knockdown vector in the eutopic ESCs, respectively. We found that the mRNAs of YAP and mTOR were increased in the eutopic ESCs compared with controls, but no statistically difference, while the protein levels were significantly increased in the eutopic ESCs. Conversely, the ratio of the autophagy marker protein LC3-II/LC3-I was significantly decreased in the eutopic ESCs compared with controls. Moreover, verteporfin treatment interfered with the YAP function, but it had no effect on mTOR expression and cell autophagy level. Rapamycin treatment and YAP knockdown in the eutopic ESCs both inhibited the expression of YAP and increased the ratio of LC3-II/LC3-I significantly. These results demonstrate that the decreased cell autophagy level is associated with the increased expression of YAP and YAP may participate in the mTOR-autophagy pathway in the eutopic ESCs of endometriosis.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

endometriosis

MeSH descriptors

Adaptor Proteins, Signal Transducing Autophagy DNA-Binding Proteins Endometriosis Endometrium Nuclear Proteins Stromal Cells TOR Serine-Threonine Kinases Transcription Factors Adaptor Proteins, Signal Transducing Adaptor Proteins, Signal Transducing Adult Cells, Cultured DNA-Binding Proteins DNA-Binding Proteins Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometrium Endometrium Female

Citation neighborhood

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

References (50)

Cited by (9)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-06-11T06:19:48.454388+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:22:48.502547+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK