Chronic hypoxia stimulates an enhanced response to immune challenge without evidence of an energetic tradeoff.

There is broad interest in whether there is a tradeoff between energy metabolism and immune function, and how stress affects immune function. Under hypoxic stress, maximal aerobic metabolism is limited, and other aspects of energy metabolism of animals may be altered as well. Although acute hypoxia appears to enhance certain immune responses, the effects of chronic hypoxia on immune function are largely unstudied.

Gene expression of the liver in response to chronic hypoxia.

Hypoxia is an important ecological, evolutionary, and biomedical stressor. While physiological acclimatization of mammals to hypoxia is well studied, the variation in gene expression that underlies acclimatization is not well studied. We acclimatized inbred mice for 32 days to hypoxic conditions that simulated altitudes of 1400, 3000, and 4500 m.

Complex signatures of selection and gene conversion in the duplicated globin genes of house mice.

Results of electrophoretic surveys have suggested that hemoglobin polymorphism may be maintained by balancing selection in natural populations of house mice, Mus musculus. Here we report a survey of nucleotide variation in the adult globin genes of house mice from South America. We surveyed nucleotide polymorphism in two closely linked alpha-globin paralogs and two closely linked beta-globin paralogs to test whether patterns of variation are consistent with a model of long-term balancing selection.