{"id":3622,"date":"2025-12-01T15:25:43","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T20:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/?p=3622"},"modified":"2025-12-01T15:25:43","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T20:25:43","slug":"reflection-2-thermogenin-and-heat-regulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/2025\/12\/01\/reflection-2-thermogenin-and-heat-regulation\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflection 2: Thermogenin and Heat Regulation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was very interested to learn about uncoupling proteins in the inner membrane of the mitochondria, particularly thermogenin. Thermogenin is an uncoupling protein that is responsible for producing heat through something called \u201cnon-shivering thermogenesis\u201d. I understand that this is especially important for babies to stay warm, which I thought about recently when spending time with my cousin\u2019s three-month old baby. I realized that when she gets cold, her body is prompted to upregulate the production of more thermogenin, which in turn increases the amount of heat that is generated and decreases the level of heat loss. This is a really important process for babies to generate heat since they don\u2019t have the muscle mass required to produce heat through shivering. It\u2019s also important to note that since protons get transported back into the mitochondria through thermogenin, they are not passing through ATP synthase, which means ATP does not get produced. However, babies\u2019 bodies can upregulate or downregulate thermogenin based on the surrounding conditions. So, if her body needs to prioritize heat production vs. ATP production, she can upregulate or downregulate thermogenin, respectively. Learning about this protein in class was really interesting and definitely put into perspective how important uncouplers are to our body\u2019s biochemical processes.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was very interested to learn about uncoupling proteins in the inner membrane of the mitochondria, particularly thermogenin. Thermogenin is an uncoupling protein that is responsible for producing heat through something called \u201cnon-shivering thermogenesis\u201d. I understand that this is especially &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/2025\/12\/01\/reflection-2-thermogenin-and-heat-regulation\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17797,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[349081],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17797"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3623,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622\/revisions\/3623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}