ABSTRACT
Oxygen is essential for life, but cultivation of cells is usually performed under 20% O(2), that do not replicate normal physiological hypoxia or pathological hypoxia conditions in the body. Recently, the effect of hypoxia on mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) has been studied, under physiological hypoxia, MSCs thrive well, and the ability differentiating to osteoblast, chondrocyte and adipocyte as well as the ability of migration are changed. Hypoxia changes the physiological characteristics of embryonic stem cell, hematopoietic stem cell and neuron stem cell as well. The mechanism of these responses might be primarily involved in the hypoxic inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) signal pathway. This review emphasizes that hypoxia is an important factor on all major aspects of stem cell biology including survival, proliferation, differentiation, and migration, and the mechanism involved in HIF-1 signaling pathway behind these responses was also discussed.