Hypoxia-inducible Factor:Recent Advances

Hypoxia-inducible factors are main factors responding to hypoxia,composed of αsubunit and β subunit.Hypoxia,heavy metal,cytokines and so on can inhibit the degradation of αunit,thenαsubunit and βsubunit combine together to become a competent heterodimers.And the heterodimers are transfered into cell nucleus to regulate the transcription of many target genes.Hypoxia-inducible factors produce marked effects in embryonic development,cell differentiation,tumor growth besides participating the maintenance of cell homeostasis in hypoxia.