What Is The Difference Between How Steroid And Peptide Hormones Function?

The main difference between how steroid hormones and peptide hormones perform is that steroid hormones are non-polar and can cross membranes, whilst peptide hormones are polar and can't cross membranes.

In reality what this means is that peptide hormones will bind to receptors on the cells they are effecting, and induce a cascading effect. Steroid hormones will travel to the nucleus and have major effects.

Insulin is an example of a peptide hormone, and a typical steroid hormone is testosterone. Like other proteins, peptide hormones are synthesized in cells from amino acids according to an mRNA template, which is itself synthesized from a DNA template inside the cell nucleus. Peptide hormone precursors (pre-prohormones) are then processed in several stages, typically in the endoplasmic reticulum, including removal of the N-terminal signal sequence and sometimes glycosylation, resulting in prohormones.

These prohormones often contain superfluous amino acid residues that were needed to direct folding of the hormone molecule into its active configuration but have no function once the hormone folds.

Steroid hormones are lipid molecules that act as hormones by causing chemical changes in other body cells. There are many types of naturally occurring steroid hormones and these are essential for proper body functioning. There are also a number of synthetic steroid hormones, known as anabolic steroids. Anabolic steroid hormones can severely disrupt the body's normal hormonal balance, resulting in a variety of health problems.

Steroid hormones are vital to the smooth functioning of a number of physiological functions, they are also the substances in control of the development and growth of the sexual organs and characteristic sexual traits of both men and women.

Abuse of steroids can result in certain physiological disorders, anabolic steroid abuse has been linked to baldness, liver disease, certain types of cancer and heart disease.

Steroid hormones usually can access the cell membrane and enter into the cytoplasm and then tot he nucleus. however, the peptide hormones need to communicate with receptors first who will carry the signal to the inside of the cell.(In details...
peptide bonds interact with surface receptor molecules on cells, and work via signal transduction (G-proteins, IP3/DAG pathway, MAP-kinase pathway, tyrosine-kinase receptors, etc.). These pathways ultimately end up increasing or decreasing transcription by way of transcription factors, but they never actually enter the cell! Steroid hormones DO IN FACT enter the cell and inside the cell directly interact with transcription factors to upregulate or downregulate transcription of a gene. )