In order to investigate the role of the hypoxia inducible factor 1 alpha (HIF-1α) in the adaptation mechanism to high altitude hypoxia, the cloning of the HIF-1α gene cDNA of Tibetan antelope (Pantholops hodgsonii), using RT-PCR and RACE, was applied, and the comparative analysis of the tissue-specific expressions of HIF-1α among Tibetan antelope, Tibetan sheep and plain sheep was performed using real-time PCR and Western blot. The sequence analysis indicated that the cDNA sequences acquired by cloning from the HIF-1α gene of Tibetan antelope comprised a 2 471-bp open reading frame (ORF) and a 1 911-bp 3'UTR. The similarity between its coding sequence, predicted amino acid sequence and HIF-1α of other mammals exceeded 87%, in which the similarity with cow was up to more than 98%, which showed that this sequence was the cDNA of HIF-1α of Tibetan antelope. The results of real-time PCR and Western blot showed that expressions of HIF-1α mRNA and protein appeared in Tibetan antelope's lung, cardiac muscle and skeletal muscle, with the highest expression in lung. HIF-1α mRNA and protein had obvious differential expression in these tissues. Further research showed that Tibetan antelope and Tibetan sheep possessed higher expressions of HIF-1α protein in the three tissues above-mentioned compared with plain sheep, and the expressions of HIF-1α mRNA and protein in Tibetan antelope's lung, cardiac muscle and skeletal muscle were higher than those of Tibetan sheep. It illustrates that the hypoxic HIF-1α-specific expression is one of the molecular bases of high altitude hypoxia adaptation in Tibetan antelope.
Adaptation, Physiological ; genetics ; physiology ; Altitude ; Animals ; Antelopes ; genetics ; physiology ; Cloning, Molecular ; Hypoxia ; physiopathology ; Hypoxia-Inducible Factor 1, alpha Subunit ; genetics ; metabolism ; Lung ; metabolism ; Male ; Myocardium ; metabolism ; RNA, Messenger ; genetics ; metabolism ; Sheep ; Tibet

High altitude hypoxia is an important factor to affect fetal development during pregnancy. In the special environment, maternal physiological functions are regulated to maintain the maternal and fetal homeostasis, so that limited oxygen is to meet the needs of fetal growth and development. In this review, the literatures about the effects of hypoxic environment on fetal development during pregnancy in recent years were summarized, in which the fetal growth characteristics, maternal physiological regulation, genetic and placental influencing factors in high altitude areas were involved. This may be helpful for the reproductive healthcare of women in high altitude region, and also for the treatment and prevention of fetal growth retardation in the hypoxic environment.

It is noteworthy that only 5% of more than 7000 described rare diseases are treated. In the era of big data, there is ever-increasing data for understanding biomedicine. The need for efficient and rapid data collection, analyses and characterization methods is pressing. Rare diseases can particularly benefit from artificial intelligence (AI) application. AI, with an emphasis on machine learning, creates a path for such efforts and is being applied to diagnosis and treatment. AI has demonstrated its potential to learn and analyze data from different sources with results in prediction。Presently, there are AI-driven technologies applied for rare diseases and this review aims to summarize these advances. Moreover, this review scrutinizes the limitation and identifies the pitfalls of AI applications in the diagnosis and treatment of rare diseases.

Dioxins, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, and benzo(a)pyrene are common organic pollutants in food. They have been of concern to academics and government administrations due to high residue and persistence, easy accumulation and strong harmful effects. The National Research Council of the United States of America published Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and Strategy in 2007, which proposed a new concept of toxicity testing that toxicity testing should take full consideration of population exposure data and base on in vitro tests, human cell lines, toxicity pathways and high-throughput screening. Meanwhile, systems biology, bioinformatics and rapid assay technologies will be used to better understand toxicity pathways—the cellular response pathways that can lead to adverse health effects when sufficient perturbing induced by chemicals exposure. The new toxicity testing strategy has changed the traditional testing pattern and has brought a wide impact on the international relevant fields. The European Union, the World Health Organization, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Center for Toxicological Research have organized relevant discussions and exploratory studies to address the new toxicity testing concept and how to evaluate and utilize the results of traditional toxicity test researches. Compared to the discussion, 'whether to do it’, ten years ago, the question, 'how to do it’, has become the concern of the current discussion. Therefore, how to respond to the concept of toxicity testing and how to effectively utilize and excavate traditional toxicity test data have been the focus of multi-disciplines and interdisciplinary academia such as toxicology, food hygiene and environmental science. Therefore, this article provides an overview of the exposure levels of dioxin, polybrominated diphenyl ethers and benzo[a]pyrene, which are typical persistent organic pollutants in food in China and the current research status of toxic pathways based on whole animal experiments. The exposure level, toxic effect and toxicity mechanism of three contaminants are analyzed and summarized in order to provide basis for future results based on the 21st century toxicity test compared with traditional tests and data mining analysis of these two kinds of data. Meanwhile, it also lays the foundation for the establishment of a toxicity testing framework based on exposure characteristics, toxic pathways, and biomarkers.