YAP and TAZ are intracellular messengers communicating multiple interacting extracellular biophysical and biochemical cues to the transcription apparatus in the nucleus and back to the cell/tissue microenvironment interface through the regulation of cytoskeletal and extracellular matrix components. Their activity is negatively and positively controlled by multiple phosphorylation events. Phenotypically, they serve an important role in cellular plasticity and lineage determination during development. As they regulate self-renewal, proliferation, migration, invasion and differentiation of stem cells, perturbed expression of YAP/TAZ signaling components play important roles in tumorigenesis and metastasis. Despite their high structural similarity, YAP and TAZ are functionally not identical and may play distinct cell type and differentiation stage-specific roles mediated by a diversity of downstream effectors and upstream regulatory molecules. However, YAP and TAZ are frequently looked at as functionally redundant and are not sufficiently discriminated in the scientific literature. As the extracellular matrix composition and mechanosignaling are of particular relevance in bone formation during embryogenesis, post-natal bone elongation and bone regeneration, YAP/TAZ are believed to have critical functions in these processes. Depending on the differentiation stage of mesenchymal stem cells during endochondral bone development, YAP and TAZ serve distinct roles, which are also reflected in bone tumors arising from the mesenchymal lineage at different developmental stages. Efforts to clinically translate the wealth of available knowledge of the pathway for cancer diagnostic and therapeutic purposes focus mainly on YAP and TAZ expression and their role as transcriptional co-activators of TEAD transcription factors but rarely consider the expression and activity of pathway modulatory components and other transcriptional partners of YAP and TAZ. As there is a growing body of evidence for YAP and TAZ as potential therapeutic targets in several cancers, we here interrogate the applicability of this concept to bone tumors. To this end, this review aims to summarize our current knowledge of YAP and TAZ in cell plasticity, normal bone development and bone cancer.Cells 2020, 9, 972 2 of 34 co-activators Yes-associated protein 1 (YAP-1, YAP) and its paralogue, the transcriptional co-activator with PDZ-binding motif (TAZ, WWTR1), which are typically controlled on the post-translational level by upstream regulatory signaling pathways in organ development and tissue homeostasis [2,3]. YAP and TAZ were reported to affect self-renewal and lineage commitment of stem cells [4][5][6][7], while hyperactivation of YAP and TAZ have been linked to cancer growth and metastasis in various tumors [8][9][10]. TAZ levels are elevated in approximately 20% of cancers and drive invasion and metastasis [11,12], while YAP is frequently overexpressed or amplified in cancer and was shown to promote resistance to chemotherapy in oncogene-addicted tumors up...