Thyroid Hormone Receptor Alpha (THRa)

Thyroid hormone receptor alpha (TR-alpha)  is a nuclear hormone receptor for triiodothyronine. It is one of the several receptors for thyroid hormone, and has been shown to mediate the biological activities of thyroid hormone. Knockout studies in mice suggest that the different receptors, while having certain extent of redundancy, may mediate different functions of thyroid hormone. Alternatively spliced transcript variants encoding distinct isoforms have been reported.Messenger RNA from this gene was expressed in tissue-specific fashion, with highest levels in the central nervous system and no expression in the liver. An increasing body of evidence indicated the presence of multiple thyroid hormone receptors. Many of the clinical and physiologic studies suggested the existence of multiple receptors.