Echinomycin is a small-molecule inhibitor of hypoxia-inducible factor-1 DNA-binding activity, which plays a crucial role in ovarian ovulation in mammalians. The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-$1{alpha}$-mediated endothelin (ET)-2 expressions contributed to ovarian ovulation in response to human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) during gonadotropin-induced superuvulation. By real-time RT-PCR analysis, ET-2 mRNA level was found to significantly decrease in the ovaries after echinomycin treatment, while HIF-$1{alpha}$ mRNA and protein expression was not obviously changed. Further analysis also showed that these changes of ET-2 mRNA were consistent with HIF-1 activity in the ovaires, which is similar with HIF-$1{alpha}$ and ET-2 expression in the granulosa cells with gonadotropin and echinomycin treatments. The results of HIF-$1{alpha}$ and ET-2 expression in the granulosa cells transfected with cis-element oligodeoxynucleotide (dsODN) under gonadotropin treatment further indicated HIF-$1{alpha}$ directly mediated the transcriptional activation of ET-2 during gonadotropin-induced superuvulation. Taken together, these results demonstrated that HIF-$1{alpha}$-mediated ET-2 transcriptional activation is one of the important mechanisms regulating gonadotropin-induced mammalian ovulatory precess in vivo.