Humanin

Pulled from a 2001 Alzheimer's cDNA library

Humanin has a stranger origin story than most of the peptides on this site. Yoshiko Hashimoto, working in Ikuo Nishimoto's lab in Tokyo, was screening a cDNA library built from the occipital lobe of an Alzheimer's patient. She was looking for transcripts that survived in neurons the disease had not yet killed. One of the hits encoded a 24-amino-acid open reading frame that her team named Humanin. The paper landed in PNAS in 2001.

The detail that took longer to settle was where the ORF actually sits. It maps to the 16S rRNA region of mitochondrial DNA, which places Humanin in the same broader family as MOTS-c (encoded in the 12S rRNA locus) but on a different mitochondrial gene and with a separate signalling footprint in the published literature. Two mitochondrial-derived peptides, two different addresses inside the same organelle.

Vial specification

• Class: mitochondrial-derived peptide (MDP)
• Length: 24 amino acids
• Source locus: small ORF within mtDNA 16S rRNA
• Discovery: Hashimoto and Nishimoto, PNAS 2001
• Common research analogue: S14G-Humanin, a synthetic variant with a serine-to-glycine swap at position 14 that several groups report as more potent in cytoprotection assays
• Form supplied: lyophilised powder, sealed amber vial
• Purity check: HPLC and mass spec, lot-specific CoA on request

What the published assays look at

Three threads dominate the wet-lab work. The first is anti-apoptotic signalling, where Humanin binds and inhibits BAX, blocking the conformational shift that lets BAX punch holes in the outer mitochondrial membrane. That single mechanism sits behind a lot of the neuronal survival data the original Tokyo group and later labs reported.

The second thread is the IGFBP-3 interaction. Ikonen and colleagues showed Humanin binds insulin-like growth factor binding protein 3, a piece of biology that crosses into metabolic and growth-axis work. The third is the MAPKBP1 and IL-12 angle, including signalling through a heterotrimeric receptor that pulls in CNTFR, WSX-1 and gp130. None of this is human therapy data. It is a snapshot of where in vitro groups have pointed the peptide.

How orders move

Stock sits in our UK facility, not a forwarding warehouse. Tracked carriers, discreet outer packaging, and roughly nine in ten UK orders are delivered inside 48 hours. The support team are humans in UK working hours, reachable on live chat or email, and the same team handles bulk requests (ten vials or more) through quoted pricing rather than the public listing.

Every vial ships with HPLC and mass spec results tied to that exact lot. If the CoA does not meet our purity threshold once you have it in hand, we refund. No restocking arithmetic.

Common bench questions

• Reconstitution? Bacteriostatic or sterile water, swirl gently, no vortex. Hold the reconstituted vial at 2 to 8 degrees C and use inside the window your protocol allows.
• Dry storage? Sealed vial at -20 degrees C, away from light and moisture, for the shelf life printed on the CoA.
• How is Humanin different from MOTS-c? Same MDP class, different mitochondrial gene (16S rRNA vs 12S rRNA), different length (24 vs 16 residues), and a distinct signalling footprint centred on BAX inhibition and IGFBP-3 binding rather than AMPK activation.
• Wildtype or S14G analogue? The product listed here is the native 24-residue sequence. Ask the support team if you need the S14G analogue quoted separately.

Sold strictly for in vitro laboratory research. Not for human or veterinary use. UK 18+.