Leumorphin, also known as dynorphin B_1–29, is a

naturally occurring A natural product is a natural compound or substance produced by a living organism—that is, found in nature. In the broadest sense, natural products include any substance produced by life. Natural products can also be prepared by chemical ...

peptide Peptides are short chains of amino acids linked by peptide bonds. A polypeptide is a longer, continuous, unbranched peptide chain. Polypeptides that have a molecular mass of 10,000 Da or more are called proteins. Chains of fewer than twenty am ...

. Derived as a proteolytic

cleavage product In chemistry, bond cleavage, or bond fission, is the splitting of chemical bonds. This can be generally referred to as Dissociation (chemistry), dissociation when a molecule is cleaved into two or more fragments. In general, there are two classi ...

of residues 226-254 of prodynorphin (preproenkephalin B), leumorphin is a nonacosapeptide (29

amino acid Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although over 500 amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the 22 α-amino acids incorporated into proteins. Only these 22 a ...

s in length) and has the

sequence In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called ''elements'', or ''terms''). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is cal ...

Tyr-Gly-Gly-Phe-Leu-Arg-Arg-Gln-Phe-Lys-Val-Val-Thr-Arg-Ser-Gln-Glu-Asp-Pro-Asn-Ala-Tyr-Ser-Gly-Glu-Leu-Phe-Asp-Ala. It can be further reduced to dynorphin B (dynorphin B-13) and dynorphin B-14 by pitrilysin metallopeptidase 1 (formerly referred to as "''dynorphin-converting enzyme''"), an

enzyme An enzyme () is a protein that acts as a biological catalyst by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrate (chemistry), substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different mol ...

of the endopeptidase family. Leumorphin behaves as a potent and selective κ-opioid receptor

agonist An agonist is a chemical that activates a Receptor (biochemistry), receptor to produce a biological response. Receptors are Cell (biology), cellular proteins whose activation causes the cell to modify what it is currently doing. In contrast, an R ...

, similarly to other endogenous opioid peptide derivatives of prodynorphin.

References

{{Opioidergics Kappa-opioid receptor agonists Opioid peptides

See also

References