YAP1 and infection: Additionally, the infection efficiency of YAP/HIF-1α overexpression or knockdown in the TH17 cells was evaluated and confirmed by means of RT-qPCR and Western blot analysis (Additional file 4: Fig. S4A, B), where sh-YAP-1 and sh-HIF-1α-1 exhibited superior efficiency, and were thus used for further experimentation (p < 0.05).