Divergent Cardiovascular Adaptations and Gene Regulation in High-Elevation Natives and Recent Colonizers of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.

Abstract excerpt

High elevation imposes unrelenting and unavoidable hypoxia on species inhabiting these environments, providing an excellent natural setting for studying convergent or divergent evolution. By integrating measures of phenotypic variation, gene regulation, and functional performance, our study demonstrates that recent colonizers of high-elevation environments exhibit fundamentally different cardiovascular changes...

Topics

• Animals
• Altitude
• Gene Expression Regulation
• Tibet
• Adaptation, Physiological
• Myocytes, Cardiac