Description
PrymaLab · Research Use Only
MOTS-C Autoinjector 3ml Pen 10mg
Two methionines and a tryptophan, held in solution for the life of the device
Every preloaded device in this catalogue trades one problem for another. It removes reconstitution and it puts the compound into solution months before anyone uses it. For MOTS-C that trade is sharper than usual, because the sequence contains three residues that are all sensitive to exactly the conditions a filled pen provides.
Specification Table
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Compound | MOTS-C |
| Full name | Mitochondrial open reading frame of the twelve S rRNA type-c |
| CAS number | 1627580-64-6 |
| Sequence | Met-Arg-Trp-Gln-Glu-Met-Gly-Tyr-Ile-Phe-Tyr-Pro-Arg-Lys-Leu-Arg |
| Single letter | MRWQEMGYIFYPRKLR |
| Residue count | Sixteen |
| Molecular formula | C101H152N28O22S2 |
| Molecular weight | 2174.6 g/mol |
| Oxidisable residues | Two methionines, at positions 1 and 6 |
| Photosensitive residue | One tryptophan, at position 3 |
| Additional aromatics | Two tyrosines and one phenylalanine |
| Device | Preloaded 3ml autoinjector |
| Declared content | 10mg |
| Nominal concentration | Approximately 3.3 mg/ml, or roughly 1.5 mM |
| Molar content | Approximately 4.6 µmol across the device |
| Supply state | Solution, from the point of manufacture |
| Storage | Refrigerated, protected from light. Follow the supplier condition |
Why Is Solution Supply Harder for MOTS-C?
Lyophilized MOTS-C powder is chemically quiet. Water is the medium in which almost every peptide degradation route runs, and removing it slows all of them by orders of magnitude.
A preloaded device gives that up by design, which is the point of the format and the cost of it.
For most sequences the cost is modest. For MOTS-C it is not, and the reason is visible in the sequence.
MRWQEMGYIFYPRKLR contains two methionines and a tryptophan.
Methionine oxidises to the sulfoxide under ordinary conditions, taking up an oxygen from dissolved air. The reaction is slow in a dry solid and considerably faster in solution, and it does not require anything unusual to happen.
Tryptophan is the most photosensitive of the standard residues. It degrades through several routes at once, producing a mixture rather than one species.
A pen therefore holds three vulnerable residues in the one state where they are most exposed, for whatever period sits between filling and use.
None of this makes the format unusable. It makes the shelf life question a real one rather than a formality, and it makes the supplier storage condition something to read rather than assume.
What Does Methionine Oxidation Look Like?
The MOTS-C oxidation chemistry is simple and the analytical consequence is not.
Oxidation adds a single oxygen atom to the sulfur, giving a sulfoxide and adding sixteen daltons to the mass.
On a 2174.6 dalton molecule sixteen daltons is about seven tenths of one percent, which a high resolution mass spectrometer separates cleanly and a nominal resolution instrument can miss entirely.
The sulfoxide is more polar than the parent, so it elutes earlier, usually as a shoulder rather than a resolved peak.
With two methionines there are three oxidised species rather than one: oxidation at position 1, oxidation at position 6, and both together at thirty-two daltons.
They do not all appear at the same rate, because the two sites sit in different local environments.
The practical reading is that a chromatogram from a device that has been sitting will show a family of early-eluting material rather than a clean single peak, and interpreting a purity figure without knowing whether the method resolves that family is guesswork.
Whether oxidation matters biologically is a separate question that the published record does not settle for this peptide, and the honest position is that an oxidised preparation is a different article whose activity has not been characterised.
What Concentration Does the Device Hold?
Ten milligrams of MOTS-C in three millilitres is approximately 3.3 milligrams per millilitre.
At 2174.6 daltons that works out near 1.5 millimolar, and the whole device holds roughly 4.6 micromoles.
That is a concentrated stock rather than a working solution.
Published MOTS-C cell work generally sits in the low micromolar range, which means a dilution of roughly a thousandfold between what the device contains and what an assay uses.
A thousandfold dilution is three serial steps, and every step is a place for error to enter.
It is also the point at which adsorption starts to matter, because the final solution is dilute enough for a meaningful fraction of the peptide to end up on the walls of the tube rather than in it.
The device format removes a weighing step and adds a dilution chain. Whether that is a good trade depends on the design, and it is worth working out before ordering rather than after.
One further point about the dilution chain.
A thousandfold dilution can be reached in three tenfold steps or in one direct step from a large volume.
The three-step route is more forgiving of pipetting error at each stage and gives three opportunities for adsorption loss.
The single-step route needs one accurate small-volume transfer into a large one. That is harder to do well and it loses less material overall.
Neither is correct in general, and the choice should be recorded because it changes the number that comes out.
What Can Be Verified in a Sealed Device?
Very little of a sealed MOTS-C device can be checked directly, which is the structural weakness of the format and the reason the paperwork carries more weight here.
The contents cannot be inspected. A vial shows its cake and a device shows a window of clear liquid, and clear liquid is consistent with a wide range of conditions.
Withdrawing material for analysis means using part of the device, which is possible and reduces what is left.
What a certificate should therefore carry for a device is different from what it carries for a vial.
The concentration as filled, determined rather than calculated.
The identity of the compound in the filled solution, not in the powder that went into it.
Purity determined on the filled solution, with the method named and with a statement on whether it resolves the oxidised species.
The vehicle composition in full, including any preservative, buffer or tonicity agent.
The fill date, which on a solution-state article is the field that anchors everything else.
A stability statement with a condition attached. A shelf life quoted without a temperature is not a shelf life.
Deliverable volume per actuation and the tolerance on it, because that is what converts a device into a quantity.
One of those fields does more work than the rest. A fill date lets a reader calculate how long the solution existed before it was used, and every other stability question follows from that number.
How Does the Device Compare With the Vial?
This catalogue sells MOTS-C as a 10mg vial and as a 40mg vial, and those pages cover the pharmacology in more depth than a device page should.
The comparison worth making here is about format rather than about the molecule.
A vial gives control over three things at once: concentration, vehicle, and the moment the clock on the solution starts running. It costs a weighing step, a reconstitution step and the errors attached to both.
A device removes those steps and fixes all three of those variables at the point of manufacture.
Where a study needs one concentration in one vehicle and will run soon after the device arrives, the device is straightforwardly better.
Where a study needs several concentrations, a specific buffer, or a defined solution age, the vial is the only option that supports it.
For this compound the solution-age point carries extra weight because of the methionines, so the format decision is less neutral here than it is for a more stable sequence.
The two are also not interchangeable in a record. A study using a device should say so, and should record the fill date, because that is the variable a vial study does not have.
One asymmetry in that comparison is worth naming. A vial can always be made into the equivalent of a device, by dissolving it. A device can never be made back into a vial.
That is the whole of the format decision in one line, and it argues for buying the vial wherever the study is not yet fully designed.
How Should the Device Be Handled?
MOTS-C device handling has its own short list and none of it resembles vial handling.
Store at the supplier stated temperature, which for a solution-state peptide will be refrigerated rather than frozen. Freezing a device risks both the peptide and the mechanism.
Keep it dark. The tryptophan is the reason and it is a good enough reason on its own, and the pen body is not always opaque.
Bring the device to room temperature before use rather than actuating it cold, since viscosity affects delivered volume.
Do not shake. Agitation drives peptide to the air-liquid interface, and a partially filled device has a headspace above the solution for exactly that to happen in.
Prime according to the supplier instruction and record whether priming was done, since it changes the first delivered volume.
Verify delivered volume gravimetrically before relying on it. Weigh an actuation onto a balance, repeat it several times, and use the measured figure rather than the nominal one.
Record the lot, the fill date, the date the device was first used, the storage temperature and the measured delivery volume.
Fill date and first-use date are both worth having, because the interval between them is the exposure the peptide has actually had, and it is the number nobody can reconstruct later.
A closing note on what a device cannot be asked to do.
It cannot supply a second concentration, it cannot supply a different vehicle, and it cannot be made younger.
All three are fixed at manufacture.
Recognising that before ordering is the difference between a format that saves work and one that quietly constrains a study.
Where Does MOTS-c Come From?
The origin of this peptide is genuinely unusual and it explains most of what the literature reports about it.
MOTS-c is encoded in the mitochondrial genome rather than in nuclear DNA. The open reading frame sits inside the 12S rRNA gene, which is why the name expands to mitochondrial open reading frame of the 12S rRNA type-c.
That places it among the mitochondrial-derived peptides, or MDPs, a small family that also includes humanin.
A peptide encoded in mitochondrial DNA and acting on cellular metabolism is a retrograde signal, meaning the mitochondria are reporting their state back to the rest of the cell rather than only receiving instructions.
Lee and colleagues described it in 2015, and that paper remains the reference point for essentially every claim made about the compound.
The reported mechanism runs through AMPK, the AMP-activated protein kinase that acts as a cellular energy sensor. AMPK activation is what the compound is proposed to produce, and the AMPK pathway is where its metabolic effects are located.
Upstream of that, the reported action is on the folate-methionine cycle, which shifts AICAR levels and so triggers AMPK.
Because AMPK activation is also what exercise produces, the compound is widely described as an exercise mimetic. That phrase is a description of a shared pathway rather than evidence that it substitutes for exercise.
What Does the Preclinical Metabolic Work Report?
The metabolic findings are the reason anyone buys this compound, and they come almost entirely from mice.
Reported effects in diet-induced obesity models include improved insulin sensitivity and resistance to weight gain on a high-fat diet.
Glucose metabolism is where the clearest results sit. Reported improvements cover glucose uptake in skeletal muscle, glucose tolerance on challenge testing, and reversal of diet-induced insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance is the specific thing those models are built to produce, so reversing it is the endpoint the design was chosen to detect rather than an incidental finding. Metabolic health in the broader sense was not measured.
Effects on body composition in those animals follow from a shift in muscle and fat metabolism, with increased fatty acid oxidation reported alongside the glucose findings.
Mitochondrial function and metabolic homeostasis are the framing the originating group uses, with the peptide positioned as a regulator restoring balance rather than driving one direction.
Human work is limited to observational studies. Circulating levels have been correlated with exercise capacity, with fasting glucose and fasting insulin, and with markers of metabolic health in small cohorts.
A correlation between an endogenous peptide level and a metabolic marker is not evidence that administering the peptide changes the marker. Those are different claims and the literature only supports the first.
No controlled trial of administered MOTS-c in humans has been published for any endpoint.
Is MOTS-c a Treatment for Diabetes or Obesity?
No, and the gap between the mouse data and that claim is where most of the marketing sits.
Type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome and obesity are the conditions named most often in vendor copy about this compound. None has been the subject of a controlled trial of it.
It is not FDA-approved for anything and holds no approval in any jurisdiction.
HbA1c is the endpoint that would matter for a glycaemic claim, and no study has measured HbA1c in humans given this peptide.
Weight loss, fat loss and weight management claims follow the same shape. The rodent work reports resistance to diet-induced obesity, which is not the same finding as weight loss in an already obese human.
Healthy aging and age-related decline appear throughout the marketing because circulating levels fall with age. That observation says nothing about whether raising them helps.
Metabolic disorders, metabolic dysfunction and chronic disease generally are invoked on the strength of the AMPK connection, which is a mechanism shared by metformin and by exercise and by a great many things.
The list keeps widening from there. Osteoporosis, chronic fatigue, tissue repair, metabolic efficiency and neuroprotective effects all appear in listings for MOTS-c, each traced to a single exploratory paper or to nothing at all.
Some of that work is real. Effects on transcription factors downstream of AMPK are reported and plausible, and improved insulin sensitivity is the best-supported finding in the file.
What none of it amounts to is a therapy. Therapeutic peptides that reach approval do so through controlled trials, and MOTS-c peptide therapy as sold has been through none.
WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, prohibits this compound. A tested athlete using it is committing an anti-doping rule violation regardless of format.
Where MOTS-c dosage figures circulate, they come from vendor sheets rather than from published human pharmacokinetics, and no dosing interval can be derived from a half-life nobody has measured.
Peptide stacking guides pair it with compounds including BPC-157, GHK-Cu, CJC-1295, tesamorelin and epitalon. None of those combinations has been tested, and peptide therapy clinics assembled them from vendor listings rather than from trial data.
This device is supplied for laboratory research only. It is not MOTS-c peptide therapy, not a treatment, and not for administration to humans or animals.
Published Literature
Selected references on the peptide, on the mitochondrial-derived peptide family and on the degradation routes available to a peptide held in solution.
- Lee C, Zeng J, Drew BG, Sallam T, Martin-Montalvo A, Wan J, et al. Cell Metabolism. 2015;21(3):443-454. DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2015.02.009
- Kim KH, Son JM, Benayoun BA, Lee C. Cell Metabolism. 2018;28(3):516-524. DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2018.06.008
- Reynolds JC, Lai RW, Woodhead JST, Joly JH, Mitchell CJ, Cameron-Smith D, et al. Nature Communications. 2021;12(1):470. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-20790-0
- Manning MC, Chou DK, Murphy BM, Payne RW, Katayama DS. Pharmaceutical Research. 2010;27(4):544-575. DOI: 10.1007/s11095-009-0045-6
Frequently Asked Questions
What is MOTS-C?
MOTS-C is a sixteen residue peptide encoded by a short open reading frame within the mitochondrial 12S ribosomal RNA gene. Its sequence is MRWQEMGYIFYPRKLR and it carries CAS 1627580-64-6.
Why is solution supply harder for this sequence?
MOTS-C carries two methionines and a tryptophan, and water is the medium in which peptide degradation runs, and a preloaded device holds those three residues dissolved from the point of manufacture.
What does methionine oxidation do to the mass?
It adds sixteen daltons per site as the sulfoxide forms. With two methionines there are three oxidised species: either site alone, or both together at thirty-two daltons.
Is that visible on a routine chromatogram?
Usually as an early-eluting shoulder rather than a resolved peak, because the sulfoxide is more polar than the parent. Whether the method separates it should be stated rather than assumed.
Does oxidation change the activity?
The published record does not settle that for MOTS-C. The honest position is that an oxidised preparation is a different article whose activity has not been characterised.
What concentration is in the device?
Ten milligrams of MOTS-C in three millilitres, so roughly 3.3 milligrams per millilitre or about 1.5 millimolar. The whole device holds approximately 4.6 micromoles.
How far does that need diluting?
Published cell work generally sits in the low micromolar range, so around a thousandfold. That is three serial steps, and the final solution is dilute enough for adsorption to matter.
What can be checked in a sealed device?
Very little directly. The contents cannot be inspected and analysis consumes part of the fill, which shifts more weight onto the certificate than a vial format does.
What should a device certificate add?
Concentration as filled rather than calculated, identity and purity determined on the filled solution, full vehicle composition, the fill date, a stability statement with a temperature, and deliverable volume with its tolerance.
When is a device better than a vial?
When a study needs one concentration in one vehicle and will run soon after delivery. A vial is the only option where several concentrations, a specific buffer or a defined solution age are needed.
Should delivered volume be measured?
Yes, gravimetrically. Weigh several actuations onto a balance and use the measured figure rather than the nominal one, since that is what converts a device into a quantity.
What belongs in the record?
Lot, fill date, first-use date, storage temperature and measured delivery volume. The interval between fill and first use is the exposure the peptide has had and cannot be reconstructed later.
Where is MOTS-c encoded?
In mitochondrial DNA rather than nuclear DNA, inside the 12S rRNA gene. It belongs to the mitochondrial-derived peptides alongside humanin, and it acts as a retrograde signal from the mitochondria to the rest of the cell.
How does MOTS-c work?
Through AMPK activation. The reported action is on the folate-methionine cycle, shifting AICAR levels and triggering AMP-activated protein kinase, which is the same energy-sensing pathway exercise engages. That shared pathway is why it gets called an exercise mimetic.
Does MOTS-c improve insulin sensitivity?
In mice. Diet-induced obesity models report improved insulin sensitivity, better glucose handling on challenge testing, and reversal of diet-induced insulin resistance. Human work is observational only, correlating circulating levels with fasting glucose and exercise capacity.
Is it a treatment for type 2 diabetes or obesity?
No. Neither has been the subject of a controlled trial of this compound, and no study has measured HbA1c in humans given it. It is not FDA-approved anywhere. Metabolic regulation claims rest on rodent glucose metabolism data.
Does it cause weight loss?
The rodent work reports resistance to weight gain on a high-fat diet, with increased fat oxidation and altered body composition. Resistance to gaining weight is not the same finding as weight loss in an already obese human, and the second has not been studied.
Is MOTS-c banned in sport?
Yes. WADA prohibits it, so a tested athlete using it is committing an anti-doping rule violation regardless of format or label. Circulating MOTS-c dosage figures come from vendor sheets, not published human pharmacokinetics.
What route does the market use?
Subcutaneous injection, which this device format supports. No published human pharmacokinetic study establishes what that route delivers. Claims about mitochondria, ATP output and oxidative stress all trace to cell and rodent work rather than to human measurement.
Compliance Statement
MOTS-C is sold exclusively for laboratory research use. It is not a drug, food, or cosmetic product, and it is not a dietary product of any kind. It is not approved by the FDA or any comparable authority for human or veterinary use, it is supplied here in a preloaded solution-state device rather than as lyophilized powder and the handling conventions written for vials do not apply to it, the sequence carries two oxidisable methionines and a photosensitive tryptophan whose degradation in solution is not always visible to a nominal resolution method, the activity of oxidised preparations has not been characterised in the published record, and no compound in this range is offered for any human or veterinary purpose. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. It must not be given to humans or animals. Purchase is restricted to qualified researchers and institutions operating within applicable laws. All handling is the responsibility of the purchasing laboratory.
Other formats of MOTS-C
MOTS-C is also stocked as MOTS-C 10MG and MOTS-C 40MG. Each listing states its own quantity and concentration, and the pen and vial comparison explains what changes between formats.
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