Corticotropin-like intermediate [lobe] peptide (CLIP), also known as adrenocorticotropic hormone fragment 18-39 (ACTH(18-39)), is a naturally-occurring

Natural product

A natural product is a chemical compound or substance produced by a living organism - found in nature that usually has a pharmacological or biological activity for use in pharmaceutical drug discovery and drug design...

, endogenous

Endogenous

Endogenous substances are those that originate from within an organism, tissue, or cell. Endogenous retroviruses are caused by ancient infections of germ cells in humans, mammals and other vertebrates...

 neuropeptide

Neuropeptide

Neuropeptides are small protein-like molecules used by neurons to communicate with each other. They are neuronal signaling molecules, influence the activity of the brain in specific ways and are thus involved in particular brain functions, like analgesia, reward, food intake, learning and...

 with a docosapeptide structure

Chemical structure

A chemical structure includes molecular geometry, electronic structure and crystal structure of molecules. Molecular geometry refers to the spatial arrangement of atoms in a molecule and the chemical bonds that hold the atoms together. Molecular geometry can range from the very simple, such as...

 and the amino acid sequence Arg-Pro-Val-Lys-Val-Tyr-Pro-Asn-Gly-Ala-Glu-Asp-Glu-Ser-Ala-Glu-Ala-Phe-Pro-Leu-Glu-Phe. CLIP is generated as a proteolyic cleavage product

Bond cleavage

Bond cleavage, or scission, is the splitting of chemical bonds.If the two electrons in a cleaved covalent bond are divided between the products, the process is known as homolytic fission and free redicals are generated by homolytic cleavage the process is known as homolytic fission or homolysis...

 of adrenocorticotropic hormone

Adrenocorticotropic hormone

Adrenocorticotropic hormone , also known as 'corticotropin', 'Adrenocorticotrophic hormone', is a polypeptide tropic hormone produced and secreted by the anterior pituitary gland. It is an important component of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and is often produced in response to biological...

 (ACTH), which in turn is a cleavage product of proopiomelanocortin

Proopiomelanocortin

Pro-opiomelanocortin is a precursor polypeptide with 241 amino acid residues. POMC is synthesized from the 285-amino acid long polypeptide precursor, pre-pro-opiomelanocortin , by the removal of a 44-amino acid long signal peptide sequence during translation.The POMC gene is located on chromosome...

(POMC). Although it does not appear to play any particularly important roles in the body, it does have some biological activity, especially of the neurological variety.