Exploring mRNA translation strategies for hypoxia adaptation across distantly related metazoans

Abstract

Adaptation to variations in oxygen concentration is a conserved mechanism in all metazoans. Extensive studies have been focused on the roles of hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) in response to hypoxia. However, HIF1α is not conserved in all animals, and HIF2α and HIF3α are only observed in vertebrates. In this review, we discuss mechanisms enabling three cross-species to adapt to hypoxic conditions. Using transcriptomic data of hypoxia-induced genes from distantly related metazoans, we analyzed the enrichment and conservation of mRNA determinants such as transcript, CDS, 5′UTR and 3′UTR size. We found that long genes are enriched in hypoxia-induced transcripts and might be translated in a 3′UTR-dependent manner. We hope our work can provide a new direction on investigating alternative mechanisms for mRNA translation under hypoxia.