For most of the last century the assumption was that mitochondrial DNA coded for a small, settled list of proteins and nothing else. Then researchers found peptides hiding inside it that nobody had catalogued.
MOTS-c is one of them. A peptide encoded by the mitochondrion itself, apparently signalling out to the rest of the cell, which turns the usual nucleus-gives-orders picture on its head.
What mitochondrial derived means
Mitochondria carry their own small genome, a leftover from the ancient bacterium they descend from. For decades that genome was thought to encode a handful of components for the respiratory chain and little else.
MOTS-c is read from a short open reading frame within that genome. So the organelle is producing a signalling molecule of its own, which is a genuinely different arrangement from almost everything else in cell biology.
The question researchers are asking
If mitochondria can signal outward, they are not simply power plants taking instructions. They are participants, capable of telling the rest of the cell something about their own state.
Published work links MOTS-c to metabolic regulation and to how cells respond to stress, with a strand looking at exercise. The underlying idea, that an organelle reports on itself, is the part worth sitting with.
Structure
A short peptide of sixteen residues. Sequence and molecular weight are on the specification table.
Handling and solubility
Dissolves in bacteriostatic water. White lyophilised powder, sealed vial at minus twenty, aliquot once in solution.
What to check on your certificate
Sequence and mass confirmation, then the batch reference against the vial.
Regulatory position in the UK
Not a licensed medicine, supplied as a laboratory reagent for in vitro research.