Collagen is a protein made up of amino-acids, that are in flip constructed of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. Collagen accommodates particular amino acids – Glycine, Proline, Hydroxyproline and Arginine.
Collagen makes up roughly 30% of the proteins throughout the physique. These are robust and robust constructions discovered all around the physique: in bones, tendons and ligaments.
Additional Studying – What Collagen Made Of?
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In nature, collagen is discovered solely in animals, particularly within the flesh and connective tissues of mammals. Collagen is part of the connective tissue that within the pores and skin helps in firmness, suppleness and fixed renewal of pores and skin cells. Collagen is important for pores and skin elasticity.
Ligaments are one other kind of connective tissue that connect two bones and consequently maintain the joints collectively. Tendons are related however completely different kind of tissue that connect the muscle tissues to the bones. All of those tissues, the bones, ligaments, tendons and the skeletal muscle tissues themselves, are made up of proteins. Probably the most predominant proteins is known as collagen.
Collagen is the primary part of connective tissue, and is probably the most plentiful protein in mammals, making up about 25% to 35% of the whole-body protein content material.
An atomic-force-microscopy picture of collagen fibrils in a collagen fiber. Picture Credit score: UChicago Argonne LLC
What does collagen do?
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Collagen helps to provide power to numerous constructions of the physique and likewise protects constructions just like the pores and skin by stopping absorption and spreading of pathogenic substances, environmental toxins, micro – organisms and cancerous cells. Collagen protein is the cement that holds every thing collectively.
Collagen can be current in all the graceful muscle tissues, blood vessels digestive tract, coronary heart, gallbladder, kidneys and bladder holding the cells and tissues collectively. Collagen is even the foremost part of the hair and nails.
Ageing and collagen
With age, collagen manufacturing slows and the cells constructions weaken. The pores and skin will get thinner and is less complicated to break, hair will get lifeless, pores and skin sags and wrinkles, tendons and ligaments turn into much less elastic, joints get stiff and so on.
Construction of collagen
Collagen microscopically happens in elongated fibrils. It’s principally present in fibrous tissues corresponding to tendon, ligament and pores and skin, and can be plentiful in cornea, bone, blood vessels, cartilage, intervertebral disc and the digestive tract.
In muscle tissue, collagen serves as a serious part of endomysium. 1 to 2% of the muscle tissues are shaped of collagen and round 6% of the entire weight of muscle tissues is shaped of collagen. Gelatin utilized in meals is collagen that has been irreversibly hydrolyzed.
Molecular construction of collagen
Within the mid-1930’s collagen was first found to have a molecular construction. Nobel laureates Crick, Pauling, Wealthy and Yonath and others together with Brodsky, Berman, and Ramachandran have been researching the construction of collagen and their attainable capabilities.
After a number of speculations of particular person peptide chain, the ultimate mannequin that has been developed is the “Madras” mannequin which supplied an basically appropriate mannequin of the molecule’s quaternary construction though this mannequin nonetheless required some refinement. It’s a triple-helical construction.
Collagen is additional packed into fibrillar collagen sorts with hexagional or quasi hexagonal shapes. The packing could also be ‘sheet-like’ or microfibrillar. The microfibrillar construction of collagen fibrils in tendon, cornea and cartilage has been immediately imaged by electron microscopy.
The microfibrillar construction of grownup tendon was confirmed in 2006 by Fraser, Miller and Wess (amongst others). They discovered the D-periodic pentameric association and termed it microfibril.