Iodine in biology ring iodine atom, and also convert T3 to 3,3'-Diiodothyronine (T2) by removing an inner ring atom. Both of the latter products are inactivated hormones which have essentially no biological effects and are quickly prepared for disposal. A family of non-selenium-dependent enzymes then further deiodinates the products of these reactions. Selenium also plays a very important role in the production of glutathione, the body's most powerful antioxidant. During the production of the thyroid hormones, hydrogen peroxide is produced in large quantities, and therefore high iodine in the absence of selenium can destroy the thyroid gland (often described as a sore throat
Iodine be obtained pure. It can be synthesised from the reaction of iodine with fluorine gas in trichlorofluoromethane at −45 °C, with iodine trifluoride in trichlorofluoromethane at −78 °C, or with silver(I) fluoride at 0 °C. Iodine monochloride (ICl) and iodine monobromide (IBr), on the other hand, are moderately stable. The former, a volatile red-brown compound, was discovered independently by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Humphry Davy in 1813–4 not long after the discoveries of chlorine and iodine, and it mimics the intermediate halogen bromine so well that Justus von Liebig was misled into mistaking bromine (which he had found) for iodine