SICB 2020: How Does Triiodothyronine Affect Lizard Metabolism?

Undergraduate Yasmeen Khawaja with her poster at SICB 2020 in Austin, TX.

As with every year, Jerry Husak sent another crew of talented undergraduates to present great work at SICB 2020! This year, Yasmeen Khawaja presented a poster on her work on the role of triiodothyronine (T3) on lizard metabolism, with specific interests in its role on mitochondrial function and oxidative phosphorylation.

Yasmeen noted her interest in T3, stating that our understanding of thyroid hormones generally, and T3 specifically, has been a mixed bag of results in nonmammalian systems. To help remedy this, she injected male green anoles (Anolis carolinensis) with either 0.01 mg/g body weight of T3 (n = 20) or saline (n = 19) subcutaneously for 19 consecutive days. Interestingly, there were no apparent effects on change in animal mass nor their standard metabolic or mitochondrial respiration rates between the two treatment groups!

Overall, Yasmeen concluded that T3 may not be the biologically active form of thyroid hormone in ectotherms and plans to conduct tests with T4 in the future. I hope she presents those data at SICB 2021!