The molecule was built by chemistry rather than by a living cell, in practice almost always by solid-phase peptide synthesis: the chain is assembled one amino acid at a time on a solid support, then cleaved off and purified. This describes how the material was made and says nothing about whether the sequence occurs in nature. A synthetic copy of a human peptide has exactly the human sequence.

Why it matters here

Origin sets which questions a certificate of analysis has to answer. Synthesis leaves residues of its own, including truncated and deletion sequences, residual solvent, and the counter-ion left by the final purification step, which are different concerns from those raised by a product grown in cells.

Also called

• synthetic
• chemically synthesized
• spps
• lab-made

SPPS is solid-phase peptide synthesis, the dominant manufacturing method. Lab-made is the informal search term for the same idea.

Compounds carrying this term

None on file yet. This term is in the controlled vocabulary but no compound record currently uses it — which is a statement about our coverage, not about the term.

See also

• Recombinant — Molecular Origin
• Human Endogenous — Molecular Origin
• Peptide — Compound Type