MOTS-C Research Dosage: Study Units and Context

Research use only. This page is a source-reading aid for published study records. It does not provide a dose, administration, safety, or outcome recommendation.

Why a MOTS-C research dosage is not a transferable number

The phrase MOTS-C research dosage can refer to very different source fields: a concentration in a cell experiment, a mass normalized to animal body weight, a fixed mass administered to one animal, or a human study that measured endogenous circulating MOTS-C without administering any material. A number is interpretable only with the research system that produced it. The published records below are deliberately read as separate unit contexts, not as entries in a range.

For each record, retain the reported material wording, experimental unit, route or exposure, timing, comparator, endpoint, and the information the source does not disclose. No cross-species conversion, route substitution, or equivalence calculation follows from these records.

A human measurement record has no exogenous intervention dose

Du et al. conducted a case-control measurement study in Hubei Province, China, enrolling 40 children and adolescents with obesity and 57 controls. The study measured circulating MOTS-C and recorded clinical and anthropometric variables; it did not administer exogenous MOTS-C. In this record, the relevant unit is a measured circulating concentration in defined participant groups, not an intervention amount. The abstract reported lower mean circulating MOTS-C in the obesity group than in controls (472.61 +/- 22.83 versus 561.64 +/- 19.19 ng/mL; P < .01) and reported correlations with metabolic variables. ^[1]

Those observations are associations from a case-control sample. They do not supply an exposure route, treatment duration, comparator intervention, or an exogenous dose. They also do not establish that a concentration measured in this population can be recreated, targeted, or compared with a mass-per-body-weight experiment in mice.

One mouse crossover study used mg/kg in a timed intraperitoneal comparison

Hyatt et al. tested a different question: acute exercise performance in six 11-week-old female C57BL/6J mice. In a crossover design, each mouse completed the exercise test after saline and after full-length human MOTS-C peptide, with the order switched for the second bout and the bouts separated by 10 days. The authors reported an intraperitoneal injection of 15 mg/kg in 110 microlitres of saline 10 minutes before the treadmill challenge. ^[2]

The comparison was saline within the same six mice under the paper’s stated treadmill test. The authors reported approximately 12% greater total running time and 15% greater distance after the peptide condition. Those values belong to that acute, timed, intraperitoneal mouse comparison; they do not describe a repeated regimen, a human exposure, a concentration in a cell system, or a general performance outcome. The small crossover sample and the specific exercise endpoint remain part of the record. ^[2]

A fixed microgram amount can belong to a co-administration experiment

Ran et al. used mdx mice and a second research material, a phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomer (PMO), to examine uptake and activity in dystrophic muscle systems. One distribution experiment reported a single intravenous 500 microgram dose of rhodamine B-labelled MOTS-C, with tissues harvested two hours later; the figure caption reports six mice and an untreated control. In a separate uptake comparison, the authors intravenously injected 500 micrograms of MOTS-C with FITC-labelled PMO at 50 mg/kg and compared that condition with PMO alone and untreated mdx controls. ^[3]

Here, 500 micrograms is a fixed amount in a mouse co-administration and tissue-distribution setting, while the PMO has its own unit and role. It is not expressed as mg/kg in the cited experiments, and it cannot be converted into the mouse crossover study’s 15 mg/kg field without body-weight data and a source-supported analytical purpose. The reported endpoints, including tissue signal, PMO uptake, and dystrophin-related measurements, also belong to the paired-material design rather than to MOTS-C alone. ^[3]

Read the unit as part of the research question

A useful literature note starts with the question that made the unit meaningful. In the human record, the question was whether circulating endogenous MOTS-C differed across case-control groups, so there was no exogenous intervention dose. In the crossover mouse record, the question was a short-window exercise comparison, so the source reports mass per body weight, route, and timing. In the mdx record, the question involved co-administration and tissue distribution, so the source reports a fixed peptide mass alongside a distinct PMO amount.

Keeping those paths separate avoids several common record errors: treating a measured human concentration as an administered amount; treating a fixed microgram amount as if it had the same meaning as mg/kg; or detaching a route and timepoint from the endpoint it was used to examine. A citation should preserve the original unit rather than translate it into an apparent universal number.

Keep publication records separate from material records

A publication describes the authors’ material, model, exposure, comparator, and endpoint. A separately supplied research material needs its own lot, label, and documentation record. The site’s MOTS-C research-material overview addresses the broader literature and material-record distinction, while the COA, MSDS, and batch review guide explains what a received-material file can document. Neither page fills missing fields in the papers above.

Sources

1. Du C, Zhang C, Wu W, et al. Circulating MOTS-c levels are decreased in obese male children and adolescents and associated with insulin resistance. Pediatric Diabetes. 2018. PMID 29691953. PubMed record.
2. Hyatt HW, Toedebusch RG, Ruegsegger G, et al. MOTS-c increases in skeletal muscle following long-term physical activity and improves acute exercise performance after a single dose. Physiological Reports. 2022;10:e15377. PMID 35808870. PMCID PMC9270643. Full text in PMC.
3. Ran N, Lin C, Leng L, et al. MOTS-c promotes phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomer uptake and efficacy in dystrophic mice. EMBO Molecular Medicine. 2021;13:e12993. PMID 33337582. PMCID PMC7863382. Full text in PMC.

This summary reports study details from the cited source and does not provide medical, veterinary, dosing, administration, safety, or treatment guidance. It does not represent a product-use recommendation.

Catalogue boundary: The related MOTS-C research material page is a separate product record. Its label and documents cannot be used to recreate the human measurement context, the timed mouse exposure, or the mdx co-administration context. This page answers the exact keyword mots-c research dosage by explaining unit meaning and non-transferability, not by offering a dosage range.