Pathway: Cellular response to hypoxia
Reactions in pathway: Cellular response to hypoxia :
Cellular response to hypoxia
Oxygen plays a central role in the functioning of human cells: it is both essential for normal metabolism and toxic. Here we have annotated one aspect of cellular responses to oxygen, the role of hypoxia-inducible factor in regulating cellular transcriptional responses to changes in oxygen availability.
In the presence of oxygen members of the transcription factor family HIF-alpha, comprising HIF1A, HIF2A (EPAS1), and HIF3A, are hydroxylated on proline residues by PHD1 (EGLN2), PHD2 (EGLN1), and PHD3 (EGLN3) and on asparagine residues by HIF1AN (FIH) (reviewed in Pouyssegur et al. 2006, Semenza 2007, Kaelin and Ratcliffe 2008, Nizet and Johnson 2009, Brahimi-Horn and Pouyssegur 2009, Majmundar et al. 2010, Loenarz and Schofield 2011). Both types of reaction require molecular oxygen as a substrate and it is probable that at least some HIF-alpha molecules carry both hydroxylated asparagine and hydroxylated proline (Tian et al. 2011).
Hydroxylated asparagine interferes with the ability of HIF-alpha to interact with p300 and CBP while hydroxylated proline facilitates the interaction of HIF-alpha with the E3 ubiquitin ligase VHL, causing ubiquitination and proteolysis of HIF-alpha. Hypoxia inhibits both types of hydroxylation, resulting in the stabilization of HIF-alpha, which then enters the nucleus, binds HIF-beta, and recruits p300 and CBP to activate target genes such as EPO and VEGF.
Cells are subject to external molecular and physical stresses such as foreign molecules that perturb metabolic or signaling processes, and changes in temperature or pH. Cells are also subject to internal molecular stresses such as production of reactive metabolic byproducts. The ability of cells and tissues to modulate molecular processes in response to such stresses is essential to the maintenance of tissue homeostasis (Kultz 2005). Specific stress-related processes annotated here are cellular response to hypoxia, cellular response to heat stress, cellular senescence, HSP90 chaperone cycle for steroid hormone receptors (SHR) in the presence of ligand, response of EIF2AK1 (HRI) to heme deficiency, heme signaling, cellular response to chemical stress, cellular response to starvation, and unfolded protein response.
Individual cells detect and respond to diverse external molecular and physical signals. Appropriate responses to these signals are essential for normal development, maintenance of homeostasis in mature tissues, and effective defensive responses to potentially noxious agents (Kultz 2005). It is convenient, if somewhat arbitrary, to distinguish responses to signals involved in development and homeostasis from ones involved in stress responses, and that classification is followed here, with macroautophagy and responses to metal ions classified as responses to normal external stimuli, while responses to hypoxia, reactive oxygen species, and heat, and the process of cellular senescence are classified as stress responses. Signaling cascades are integral components of all of these response mechanisms but because of their number and diversity, they are grouped in a separate signal transduction superpathway in Reactome.
