Beginner question and I apologize if it's obvious. The forum has a 'Peptides vs Hormones' subtopic but I don't fully understand how those two things are even different categories if some hormones ARE peptides.
Is 'hormone' about what the molecule is, or about what it does? Because that seems like the crux of my confusion.
You basically answered your own question, and it's a good instinct. 'Peptide' describes what the molecule is made of (amino acids in a chain). 'Hormone' describes a role, a signaling molecule that travels and acts on a target elsewhere in the body. Those are two different axes.
So a peptide hormone is both: peptide by structure, hormone by function. But not all peptides are hormones (plenty are structural, enzymatic, or just fragments), and not all hormones are peptides (steroid hormones like cortisol are lipids, not amino acid chains). The categories overlap without being the same.
The 'what it's made of' vs 'what it does' framing is such a clean way to put it. I'd been mentally treating them as competing labels when they're really answering two separate questions about the same molecule.
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