During hypoxia, the hypoxia inducible factor (HIF) binds to hypoxia-response elements (HRE) and induces the expression of hypoxia-inducible genes (HIG). A functionally active HRE typically contains an adjacent hypoxia ancillary sequence (HAS) in its downstream within the space of 7-15 nt. Here, a computational tool 'HRE Finder' is discussed using an example data set. The tool provides the ability for mining canonical HREs and predicting functional HREs in the upstream region of genes, which can be an indispensable tool for genome-wide analysis and identification of hypoxia inducible genes in vertebrates.

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