High-altitude environments are known to be amongst the most demanding and challenging habitats in which living organisms have ever lived. At higher altitude, characteristic adjustments occur at every physiological level to ensure successful adaptation. In the past years, integrative approaches have been applied to better understand these physiological changes at the subcellular, cell, tissue, organ and whole organism levels, as well as their integration.
Genome sequencing, population genomic analyses, proteomic and metabolomic profiling of indigenous high-altitude humans and several animals have identified several key genes, pathways, proteins and metabolites for conferring physiological advantages to survive under persistent hypobaric hypoxia. Studies of highland native humans and animals integrating genomic information with physiological adaptations often highlight association between specific genotypes, environment and hypoxia-associated phenotypes. With the availability of modern omics techniques (genomics, epigenomics, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, and phenomics) high altitude biologists have unique opportunities to depict the complex mechanism of high-altitude adaptation. Experimental strategies integrating multiple “omics” techniques hold advantage for drawing correct inferences about phenotypic selection under hypobaric hypoxia and understanding mechanisms of high-altitude adaptation.
This Frontiers Research Topic welcomes contributions that improves our understanding about adaptation to high altitude environment. Potential areas of interest may include, but are not limited to:
• Deciphering adaptive patterns of high-altitude native human populations
• Correlating omics-based data with adaptive phenotypes
• Omics-based investigations for understanding high altitude animals
• Identification of key regulators and correlation with phenotype
• Morpho-anatomical and physiological adaptations to high altitude
• Hypoxia-related physiological traits among high-altitude populations
We encourage the submission of different article types to this collection, especially reviews, mini-reviews, and original research papers. For a complete list of article types that can be considered, please follow this
link.
Even though abstract submission is not mandatory, we encourage all interested researchers to submit an abstract before submitting their manuscript. Abstracts do not have to coincide with the final abstract of the manuscripts.