High-altitude Tibetan animals like yaks, Tibetan antelopes, and snow leopards live at around 4,000 meters where oxygen partial pressure is roughly 40% lower than at sea level, a chronic hypoxia that would cause severe oxidative stress and white matter demyelination in most mammals within hours to days. Researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University found that these animals carry an amino acid change, a gain-of-function mutation, in a gene called RETSAT (retinol saturase), suggesting evolution may have found a way to protect myelin under low-oxygen stress.
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The brain consumes roughly 20% of the body's total oxygen, making it especially vulnerable when oxygen is scarce, which is offered as a reason white matter and myelination are affected early under hypoxia.
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52:49with the animals of the Tibetan plateau. They live at 4,000 m on average. Um, like the yak, the humble yak, where oxygen partial pressure is roughly 40% lower than at sea level. I mean, we're pretty close to sea level here in Los Angeles. Imagine 40% less oxygen. Um, these animals like the yaks, the Tibetan antelopes, snow leopards, they've spent thousands of generations evolving solutions to that environment that would kill most mammals in hours to days. Okay? >> Including humans like chronic hypoxia, which is like low oxygen, is disastrous, >> a lot of oxidative stress, very
53:30specifically neurodedevelopmental deficits, particularly in white matter injury. and demyelination. This is a known thing. >> This is the superighway that we talked about earlier. >> Yeah. The white matter in the brain which has a bunch of myelin gets demyelinated with hypoxia. >> Mhm. >> So maybe there's a clue, right? >> Very interesting. Okay. >> I mean, the brain consumes something like 20% of the body's oxygen. So it makes sense that if the oxygen is low, the brain is one of the first things that's going to go, right? >> It doesn't have the the the raw materials to do the things it normally does. Part of which is this the mileination process. >> Exactly. And that's where this current paper comes in. So it's out of Shanghai
Evolutionary BiologyNeurobiologyPharmacologyRegenerative Medicine