Nonpeptide

Part of speech: adjective, noun

Definitions

1. Referring to a substance or compound that does not contain peptide bonds or is not derived from peptides ; used especially in biochemical contexts to distinguish molecules lacking peptide structures
2. Describing chemical entities that are not composed of amino acid sequences linked by peptide bonds ; often contrasted with peptides in molecular biology and pharmaceuticals
3. Characterizing compounds or molecules that exclude peptide linkages in their composition ; frequently applied to distinguish non-protein-based substances in scientific studies

Etymology: "Nonpeptide" is a plain technical formation: the prefix "non-" attached to "peptide," meaning a compound that lacks peptide bonds. The "non-" prefix comes from Latin "non," meaning "not," and it is one of the most productive ways English builds scientific terms, so it is attached to a huge range of base words in chemistry, biology and medicine. "Peptide" itself is a 19th-century coinage from the German chemist Emil Fischer, who used it in the 1900s to describe short chains of amino acids joined by the bonds that link one amino acid's acid group to the next one's amino group. The bond between them became known as the peptide bond, so a peptide is essentially a short protein fragment. In practice, "nonpeptide" is used in pharmacology to describe drug molecules that are not built from amino acid chains, which matters because peptide-based drugs are often broken down by digestive enzymes and so are harder to take by mouth.

Synonyms: non-peptide, small molecule, non-protein

Antonyms: peptide, protein