What is MOTS-c? A plain-English explainer
A lab-made copy of a short peptide your own mitochondria are encoded to produce.
MOTS-c is a synthetic peptide — a chain of 16 amino acids copied from a sequence encoded within mitochondrial DNA, specifically a region overlapping the mitochondrial 12S rRNA gene. It was identified and named by researchers in 2015 and belongs to a small class of molecules called mitochondrial-derived peptides. It is sold and studied as a research chemical, not an approved medicine.
That one paragraph is the whole definition. The rest of this page unpacks it at two levels — plain English, then a little deeper — and shows how the reconstitution math works, because MOTS-c ships as a dried powder that has to be mixed and measured before anything else.
MOTS-c in plain English
MOTS-c is 16 amino acids long, which puts it firmly in peptide territory.
Most of the instructions for building the proteins in your body are stored in the DNA packed into each cell’s nucleus. But mitochondria — the structures inside cells often described as their energy producers — carry their own small, separate loop of DNA. In 2015, researchers scanning that mitochondrial DNA found a previously overlooked stretch that could code for a short peptide. They synthesised it in the lab and named it MOTS-c, an abbreviation for “Mitochondrial Open Reading Frame of the 12S rRNA-c.” So when you see the name, read it as: a specific, lab-made short peptide whose sequence was traced back to mitochondrial DNA, nothing more mysterious than that.
It usually arrives as a small glass vial of white powder. The powder is the peptide with the water removed (freeze-dried, or “lyophilised”) so it stays stable in storage. On its own the powder can’t be measured into a syringe — there’s no volume to draw. That’s why the next step, reconstitution, exists.
The science, a little deeper
A few specifics that the plain-English version glosses over:
- It’s a defined sequence, not a mixture. MOTS-c is a single, known 16-amino-acid sequence (MRWQEMGYIFYPRKLR). That’s what makes it a peptide in the chemical sense rather than an extract.
- It belongs to a distinct, recently discovered class. MOTS-c is one of a handful of known mitochondrial-derived peptides — short peptides encoded in mitochondrial DNA rather than the cell’s nuclear DNA. This class was first described in the scientific literature in the 2000s and 2010s, making it one of the more recently characterised peptide families compared to hormone-derived peptides.
- It’s supplied lyophilised. Removing the water gives the powder a long shelf life; adding a measured liquid back (reconstitution) is what turns it into an injectable solution with a known strength.
- “Research chemical” is a regulatory status, not a marketing word. MOTS-c has not been approved as a drug by the FDA or any comparable regulator. Most of what’s published about it comes from preclinical work — laboratory and animal studies — with human research still at an early, limited stage. This page makes no claim about what it does in people.
If you want the classification in one line: MOTS-c is a synthetic mitochondrial-derived research peptide, 16 amino acids, supplied as a freeze-dried powder for reconstitution.
How reconstitution works for MOTS-c
Reconstitution is just dissolving the powder in a known volume of liquid so you have a concentration — milligrams of peptide per millilitre of solution. Once the concentration is fixed, the volume you draw for any target dose is simple arithmetic:
- Concentration = vial amount (mg) ÷ diluent volume (mL)
- Draw volume = target dose ÷ concentration
- Syringe units = draw volume (mL) × the units-per-mL of your syringe
The numbers all come from your own vial label and your prescription — the peptide amount printed on the vial, the volume of bacteriostatic water you add, and the dose you were told to use. The separate Amidra web calculator runs exactly those three steps and shows the formula at each one, so you can check it by hand. It never fills in a dose for you.
What Amidra does — and doesn’t — do here
Amidra is a tracking and education tool. It converts the values you enter and helps you keep a protocol organised; it does not recommend a dose, a compound, or a schedule, and it takes no position on whether anyone should use MOTS-c. Those decisions belong with a qualified healthcare professional. The information above is definitional — what the compound is — not medical advice.