ArticleInterface focus2020
Harnessing hypoxia as an evolutionary driver of complex multicellularity.
Article in Interface focus, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Hypoxia-induced gene expression changes in N. vectensis embryos.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Oxygen regulation in the earliest animals: spatiotemporal resolution of oxygen dynamics in single-osculumFrontiers in physiology · 2026Article
- Ediacaran origin and Ediacaran-Cambrian diversification of Metazoa.Science advances · 2024Article
- Evolutionary reversion in tumorigenesis.Frontiers in oncology · 2023Review
- The origin and distribution of the main oxygen sensing mechanism across metazoans.Frontiers in physiology · 2022Article
- Evolution of a key enzyme of aerobic metabolism reveals Proterozoic functional subunit duplication events and an ancient origin of animals.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- The issues with tissues: the wide range of cell fate separation enables the evolution of multicellularity and cancer.Medical oncology (Northwood, London, England) · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Animal tissue requires low-oxygen conditions for its maintenance. The need for low-oxygen conditions contrasts with the idea of an evolutionary leap in animal diversity as a result of expanding oxic conditions. To accommodate tissue renewal at oxic conditions, however, vertebrate animals and vascular plants demonstrate abilities to access hypoxia. Here, I argue that multicellular organisms sustain oxic conditions first after internalizing hypoxic conditions. The 'harnessing' of hypoxia has allowed multicellular evolution to leave niches that were stable in terms of oxygen concentrations for those where oxygen fluctuates. Since oxygen fluctuates in most settings on Earth's surface, the ancestral niche would have been a deep marine setting. The hypothesis that 'large life' depends on harnessing hypoxia is illustrated in the context of conditions that promote the immature cell phenotype (stemness) in animal physiology and tumour biology and offers one explanation for the general rarity of diverse multicellularity over most of Earth's history.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.