Cryptides : elucidation of regulatory mechanisms by functional peptides hidden in protein structures

在这里，我们发现许多在功能蛋白成熟和降解过程中同时产生的碎片肽和生物活性多肽具有高效的生理活性，尽管这些碎片肽一直被认为没有生物学意义。我们从猪心脏中纯化并鉴定了隐藏在线粒体蛋白丝裂原蛋白-2和-3中的新的功能多肽，它们可以在纳摩尔浓度下激活中性粒细胞。并阐明了这些丝裂原激活物的受体分子和细胞内信号机制。

Here, we discovered that many fragmented peptides simultaneously produced during maturation and degradation processes of functional proteins and bioactive peptides have efficient physiological activities although these fragmented peptides have long been thought that they had no biological significance. We purified and identified novel functional peptides hidden in mitochondrial proteins mitocryptide-2 and-3 that activated neutrophils at nanomolar concentrations from porcine hearts. The receptor molecules and the intracellular signal mechanisms for these mitocryptides were also elucidated.