“…Environmental changes impose the pressure of natural selection on vertebrates, which supports the evolution of adaptive mechanisms for survival. As a typical example of adaptive evolution in extreme environments ( Richalet, 2007 ), high-altitude acclimatization refers to the heritable and irreversible changes in morphology ( Brutsaert et al, 1999 ; Miles et al, 2009 ), physiology ( Storz et al, 2009 ; Naeije, 2010 ), biochemistry ( García-Hjarles, 1989 ; Li et al, 2010 ), and ethology ( Mamatov et al, 2012 ) in highland habitants during long-term selection pressure, such as reduced oxygen availability, low ambient temperatures, and high ultraviolet radiation (UV; Brookfield and Allen, 1989 ; Wang et al, 2014 ). These changes are primarily triggered on a molecular level to modulate organic metabolism, especially in representatively hypoxia-sensitive tissues such as heart ( Jarmakani et al, 1978 ; Wilson et al, 1993 ; Moromisato et al, 1996 ; Park et al, 2007 ; Chen et al, 2009 ), kidney ( Luks et al, 2008 ; Dan et al, 2010 ; Yijiang et al, 2013 ), liver ( Komolova and Egorov, 1985 ; Moromisato et al, 1996 ; Rong and Gastroenterology, 2009 ), lung ( Moromisato et al, 1996 ; Liu, 2011 ; Li et al, 2012 ), longissimus muscle ( Lundby et al, 2003 , 2009 ; Murray, 2009 ; Levett et al, 2012 ; Zhang et al, 2015 ), and spleen ( Ou et al, 1980 ; Kam et al, 1999 ; Richardson et al, 2008 ).…”