biotechnology 16 370 1998 however the 16 residue zelan094 differs from the 12 residue seq id no 1 in that it has four additional amino acid residues kkka at the n terminus and a blocking amide at the c terminus these n terminus and c terminus modifications are designed to enhance the solubility and the in vivo stability of the mtlp respectively the nh 2 terminus alanine also may contribute to the alpha helical properties of the peptide the mtlps of the present invention include peptides comprising all of or a fragment of zelan094 or having at least 4 of the contiguous amino acids of zelan094 the mtlps of the present invention also include sequences that are substantially homologous to regions of zelan094 preferably these show at least 70 80 or 90 identity over an identical size sequence it is understood that a person in the art can make chemical changes in the mtlps without significantly altering their activity examples of nucleic acid sequences which encode the peptide sequences of the mtlps zelan094 felan 094 zelan 094r 176 193 204n and n204 seq id nos 2 24 are provided in table 2 seq id nos 25 47 however due to the degeneracy of nucleotide coding sequences different nucleotide sequences which encode substantially the same amino acid sequence may be used that is a nucleotide sequence altered by substitution of a different codon can encode a functionally equivalent amino acid to produce a silent change mtlps may be synthesized using chemical methods u s pat nos 4 244 946 4 305 872.