Peptide directoryWhole body

SHLP5

A small humanin-like peptide with little activity found so far.

Where it comes from

Made in
Predicted from the mitochondrial sequence and never since detected in a tissue
Sent out by
Unknown
Acts on
  • Unknown

What it does

  • No clear effect on cell survival, cell death or cell division in the screen that named it 1
  • The odd one out: antibodies were raised against SHLP1, 2, 3, 4 and 6, but repeated attempts at a specific antibody to SHLP5 failed, so it has never been shown to exist as a peptide in any tissue 1
  • It remains a reading of the sequence, a frame inside the 16S ribosomal RNA gene that would make a 24-residue peptide if the cell translates it 1

In medicine

  • None, and none is possible yet: with no assay there is nothing to measure in anybody
  • No human genetic finding touches it. Of the six, only SHLP2 carries one, and here the synthetic peptide is all anyone has worked with

Beyond the body’s own use

  • Nothing is in trials and nothing could be, since nobody has shown that the body makes it 1
  • SHLP5 shows why this family is hard: the peptides are short, tissue amounts are small, and antibody detection is the weakest proof. No mitochondrial-encoded micropeptide was identified directly by mass spectrometry until SHMOOSE in 2022, and SHLP5 still has not been 2

Sources

  1. Cobb et al., Mitochondrial-derived peptides are age-dependent regulators of apoptosis and insulin sensitivity, Aging 2016
  2. Miller et al., Mitochondrial DNA variation in Alzheimer’s disease reveals a microprotein called SHMOOSE, Molecular Psychiatry 2023

This card describes what a medicine is for and what the evidence says; it recommends nothing. Talk to your clinician about anything you read here.