Two routes to functional adaptation: Tibetan and Andean high-altitude natives

Abstract

Populations native to the Tibetan and Andean Plateaus are descended from colonizers who arrived perhaps 25,000 and 11,000 years ago, respectively. Both have been exposed to the opportunity for natural selection for traits that offset the unavoidable environmental stress of severe lifelong high-altitude hypoxia. This paper presents evidence that Tibetan and Andean high-altitude natives have adapted differently, as indicated by large quantitative differences in numerous physiological traits comprising the oxygen delivery process. These findings suggest the hypothesis that evolutionary processes have tinkered differently on the two founding populations and their descendents, with the result that the two followed different routes to the same functional outcome of successful oxygen delivery, long-term persistence and high function. Assessed on the basis of basal and maximal oxygen consumption, both populations avail themselves of essentially the full range of oxygen-using metabolism as populations at sea level, in contrast with the curtailed range available to visitors at high altitudes. Efforts to identify the genetic bases of these traits have included quantitative genetics, genetic admixture, and candidate gene approaches. These reveal generally more genetic variance in the Tibetan population and more potential for natural selection. There is evidence that natural selection is ongoing in the Tibetan population, where women estimated to have genotypes for high oxygen saturation of hemoglobin (and less physiological stress) have higher offspring survival. Identifying the genetic bases of these traits is crucial to discovering the steps along the Tibetan and Andean routes to functional adaptation.

Fig. 1.

Ambient oxygen levels, measured by the partial pressure of oxygen (solid line) or as a percent of sea-level values (dashed line), decrease with increasing altitude, a situation called high-altitude or hypobaric hypoxia. The atmosphere contains ≈21% oxygen at all altitudes.

Fig. 2.

The oxygen transport cascade at sea level (solid line) and at the high altitude of 4,540 m (dashed line) illustrates the oxygen levels at the major stages of oxygen delivery and suggests potential points of functional adaptation (data from ref. 60).

Fig. 3.

Boxplots comparing pairs of Tibetan and Andean samples, measured at ≈4,000-m altitude by using the same recruiting and measurement protocols, illustrate the marked quantitative differences in resting ventilation, HVR, hemoglobin concentration, and percent of oxygen saturation (recalculated from data reported in refs. and , recalculated from data reported in refs. and 61).

Fig. 4.

The calculated arterial oxygen content of Tibetan men and women is profoundly lower than their Andean counterparts measured at ≈4,000 m (data from ref. 62), whereas the exhaled NO concentration is markedly higher (recalculated from data reported in ref. 34).

Fig. 5.

High-altitude native Tibetans have higher capillary density than their Andean counterparts or populations at low altitude; Tibetan and Andean highlanders both have lower mitochondrial volume than low-altitude populations (data from refs. , , , and 64).