Oxygen Sensing: Responses and Adaption to Hypoxia PDF

PREFACE

Claude Lenfant wrote to me (S.L.) in June 2000 about his interest in functional genomics of oxygen sensing and the cellular mechanisms of the process and said that he would like to see a volume on this topic for the Lung Biology in Health and Disease series. Interestingly, at about the same time, I, with Nanduri Prabhakar and Gregg Semenza, finished working on a symposium volume on oxygen sensing and Claude's proposal fell into place for the three of us. We decided to take up the challenge, and this volume was created. Almost all the invited authors agreed to contribute a chapter. When the chapters were assigned, no one knew what the others were going to write. We did not give any direction nor did we try to control the minds of the contributors. We decided to let each chapter stand alone. Remarkably, there was little overlap between the chapters.

The first 10 chapters are about the genomics of oxygen sensing, which is time dependent. The next 18 chapters are about oxygen sensing by the carotid body, the primary instantaneous oxygen sensor in mammals. These contain a mix of acute hypoxia with chronic intermittent and sustained hypoxia. The remaining chapters deal with very interesting aspects of oxygen biology by neurons and other cells. Oxygen sensing takes place in the cell membrane, in the cytoplasm interaction between endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondria, and in the nucleus. Our emphasis was not just on what happens but how it happens.

There is very little explicit discussion of the clinical aspects of oxygen deprivation, but it is implicit throughout the volume.

This book would not exist without the incessant work of Mary Pili to whom we, particularly S.L., owe our gratitude.