Lasting longer without oxygen: The influence of hypoxia on Notch signaling.

Notch signaling has multiple functions during invertebrate and vertebrate development, where it plays important roles in cell fate determination, proliferation, survival, and border formation. The precise function of Notch signaling is context dependent, and one of the unsolved mysteries of Notch signaling is how a relatively stereotyped signal transduction pathway exerts such a wide variety of context-specific responses. Recent data from Gustaffson et al. provide important new information on this topic by showing that hypoxia enhances Notch signaling due to the association of Notch and HIF-1alpha. This interaction may have important consequences for tumor cell growth.