endocrine
Pineal / circadian
Papers on short peptides written for the pineal gland and circadian timing — the tissue that helps set the body’s clock.
This chapter is the pineal gland and the circadian system it helps keep. In the Khavinson lineage, pineal work is the most widely cited organ-specific thread: tissue extracts of the pineal, and short synthetic peptides designed after that tissue, sit at the center of this library’s first studies. The filing rule is simple. If the authors wrote the peptide for pineal tissue or for the clock that tissue is asked to keep, the paper belongs here.
Peptide themes that belong on this hub are pineal extracts and their short-chain analogs (often discussed as Epithalamin and Epitalon / Epithalon). Adjacent themes — night-time endocrine signaling, melatonin rhythm, and, in some communications, telomere biology in cultured cells — appear when the authors frame them as pineal or systemic-clock work. Papers whose primary tissue is cortex, thymus, or vessels belong in those hubs instead.
Read the linked studies as laboratory and clinical communications, not as product claims. Note the model (culture, animal, or human), the peptide name as the authors spelled it, and the PMID. Public pages cite PubMed only. We do not host publisher PDFs, and a summary on this site is not a substitute for the paper.
Studies
- Identification of Peptide AEDG in the Polypeptide Complex of the Pineal Gland
HPLC and mass spectrometry of a pineal polypeptide complex detected the tetrapeptide AEDG among its tetrapeptide fraction; the authors infer that AEDG accounts for much of the complex’s published biology.
- Melting of DNA double strand after binding to geroprotective tetrapeptide.
Binding of Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly to poly(dA-dT) duplex DNA lowered the reported melting temperature from 69.5 °C to 28 °C on a saturation isotherm — biophysical melting, not a cell or clinical study.
- Normalizing effect of the pineal gland peptides on the daily melatonin rhythm in old monkeys and elderly people.
In old monkeys and elderly people, Epithalamin and Epitalon were reported to restore night-time melatonin and the circadian amplitude of the hormone — combined primate and human work, not a large blinded RCT.
- Molecular mechanism of interaction between oligopeptides and double-stranded DNA.
AEDG binding to poly(dA-dT) duplex DNA at neutral pH and ambient temperature produced a hyperchromic effect the authors read as local double-helix separation — biophysical chemistry, not a cell or clinical study.
- Geroprotective effect of epithalamine (pineal gland peptide preparation) in elderly subjects with accelerated aging.
A 12-year randomized clinical study of epithalamine in elderly patients with coronary disease and accelerated cardiovascular aging; the authors report lower all-cause and cardiovascular mortality versus the same basic therapy alone.
- DNA double-helix binds regulatory peptides similarly to transcription factors
A complementarity model of Epitalon (AEDG) in the DNA major groove, proposing an ATTTC motif in the telomerase promoter — sequence analysis, not a wet-lab binding assay.
- Epithalon peptide induces telomerase activity and telomere elongation in human somatic cells.
Short in-vitro communication: the authors report that Epithalon induced telomerase catalytic-subunit expression, enzymatic activity, and telomere elongation in telomerase-negative human fetal fibroblasts.
- Effect of regulatory peptides on gene transcription.
Conformational analysis of the tetrapeptide Epithalon proposed complementary nucleotide-pair sites in promoters of retinal gene F379, telomerase, and RNA polymerase II — sequence modeling, not a wet-lab transcription assay.
- Synthetic tetrapeptide epitalon restores disturbed neuroendocrine regulation in senescent monkeys
In aged female rhesus monkeys, ten days of Epitalon raised evening melatonin and the authors report a more normal cortisol circadian pattern; young animals showed little change.