WEBINAR—Understanding Body Temperature and Energy Homeostasis in Mice

May 6, 2025
11 a.m. EDT

Mice and humans are both homeotherms—they maintain a stable internal body temperature regardless of external influence. However, our size difference means thermal strategies for controlling body temperature are different. Mice have 14 times higher mass-specific surface area than people, give off huge amounts of heat and have a correspondingly high metabolic rate to maintain body temperature. Humans live in a thermoneutral zone, where metabolic rate and body temperature are constant over a range of ambient temperatures. In contrast, mice have an ambient temperature thermoneutral point, above which body temperature increases, and below which energy expenditure increases. This webinar program will examine strategies for choosing ambient temperature(s) for studying mice.  

Key Learning Objectives:   

• Understand how ambient temperature affects metabolic rate.
• Understand the concepts of a thermoneutral zone vs a thermoneutral point.
• Understand how changing ambient temperature can affect physiology.

Speaker

Marc Reitman, MD, PhD
Branch Chief, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health

Marc Reitman, MD, PhD, is chief of the Diabetes, Endocrinology and Obesity Branch in the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. His research focuses on using mice to understand the physiology of obesity and body temperature, with interests in the neural regulation of metabolic rate and body temperature, the bombesin-like receptor 3 gene and using mice to forecast drug efficacy in humans.   

Sponsored by: