SHLP1

Where it comes from

Made in

Read off the mitochondrial sequence in 2016, then found by antibody in mouse heart, kidney and spleen

Sent out by

Unknown; no study has reported it in blood

Acts on

• Unknown

What it does

• The same stretch of mitochondrial DNA is read two ways: as part of the 16S ribosomal RNA, and in another frame as a short peptide. That is how humanin and the six SHLPs come to sit inside a gene for a structural RNA ¹
• SHLP1 is the quiet one: in the screen that named them it changed neither cell survival, nor cell death, nor cell division, while SHLP2, SHLP3, SHLP4 and SHLP6 each did something ¹
• Its tissue pattern is its own, heart and kidney and spleen in the mouse, where SHLP2 sits in liver, kidney and muscle ¹

In medicine

• None. No laboratory measures SHLP1, and no study has reported its level in people
• There is no genetic handle on it either: of the six, only SHLP2 has a human genetic finding behind it ²

Beyond the body’s own use

• Nothing is in trials. SHLP1 has not been given to an animal: the 2016 paper took SHLP2 and SHLP3 forward and left the other four as sequences with antibodies raised against them ¹
• The open question is whether the body makes it in amounts that matter. Its detection rests on an antibody against a synthetic peptide rather than on finding the peptide itself ²