Pepsin is a pro­te­olyt­ic enzyme. It helps in digest­ing pro­teins. Cells in the stom­ach secrete pepsin to help digest the pro­tein that you con­sume through food. Spe­cial­ized cells in the intes­tine then absorb the diges­tion prod­ucts of the pro­tein into the blood­stream and your cells take them up from there.

Pepsin Struc­ture

Tech­ni­cal­ly, pepsin wouldn’t be need­ed to digest the pro­tein that you eat. Pro­teins are made up of small build­ing block mol­e­cules called amino acids. The bond between amino acids, known as the pep­tide bond, breaks when they’re exposed to water and acid. Gas­tric juices inside the stom­ach, are most­ly made of water and with the acid secret­ed by the stom­ach, pro­teins can be digest­ed. How­ev­er, in the absence of pepsin, this reac­tion would be real­ly slow. In actu­al­i­ty, pepsin can­not break all the bonds in a pro­tein mol­e­cule. There are many dif­fer­ent types of amino acids that are bond­ed togeth­er to make a pro­tein and pepsin spe­cial­izes in break­ing bonds between large amino acids.

Pepsin Chem­istry

Enzymes like pepsin are bio­log­i­cal cat­a­lysts. This means that they’re chem­i­cals that help reac­tions in the body take place faster than they oth­er­wise would, but they them­selves aren’t con­sumed in the reac­tion. Specif­i­cal­ly, pepsin helps in digest­ing pro­teins. It is secret­ed by spe­cial­ized cells in the lin­ing of the stom­ach known as chief cells. Pepsin, itself is a pro­tein, but in con­trast to the pro­teins that you eat and digest, pepsin has bio­log­i­cal activ­i­ties in the stom­ach.

Pepsin For­ma­tion

One of the body’s chal­lenges in pro­duc­ing pepsin is keep­ing it from digest­ing the cells where it’s made. Cells are made up of most­ly pro­teins, mean­ing that if a cell pro­duces pepsin, it’s at a risk for being digest­ed by pepsin. As such, your chief cell pro­duces pepsin in an inac­tive pre­cur­sor form called pepsino­gen. This is acti­vat­ed once it reach­es the stom­ach so that it doesn’t harm the cells that pro­duce it. Pepsino­gen pro­duc­tion and release are reg­u­lat­ed in part by the ner­vous sys­tem and also by endocrine hor­mones and the amount of acid in the stom­ach. Peo­ple with med­ical con­di­tions that reduce stom­ach acid secre­tions, such as the autoim­mune con­di­tion, achlorhy­dria have a reduced pepsin lev­el, and are less able to digest pro­teins effi­cient­ly. For treat­ing such con­di­tions pepsin is avail­able in numer­ous med­i­cines. If you’re look­ing for qual­i­ty pepsin CAS 9001-75-6 for man­u­fac­tur­ing your drug, get in touch with Wat­son Inter­na­tion­al. In addi­tion to this, we offer var­i­ous oth­er enzymes as well.