The ability for cells to respond and survive for an extended period of time in low oxygen conditions is in large part due to transcriptional changes that occur. Many of these changes are controlled by the HIF-1 complex. Without the HIF-1 complex, however, round worms still have the ability to respond appropriately to hypoxia. In order to identify what exactly is controlling these responses, independently of the HIF-1 complex, a HIF-1 mutant line of round worms was established, where the round worms had a completely inactive HIF-1 complex. These mutant round worms also express green fluorescence protein (GFP) in hypoxic or cobalt chloride treatments. The GFP response is not evident with stresses other than hypoxia. This suggests that whatever is controlling the GFP response is different to whatever controls the HIF-1 complex. In order to identify the genes that are responsible for the response to hypoxic conditions, RNA interference (RNAi) is used. It was shown that blmp-1 is one of the mediators of the HIF-1 independent response. Meaning that when the HIF-1 complex is inactive, blmp-1 is what mediates the response to hypoxia. Further, it was shown that blmp-1 works by increasing the histone acetylation within the promoter of the non-HIF dependent hypoxic response gene.