Collagen - History and Background

History and Background

The molecular and packing structures of collagen have eluded scientists over decades of research. The first evidence that it possesses a regular structure at the molecular level was presented in the mid-1930s. Since that time, many prominent scholars, including Nobel laureates Crick, Pauling, Rich and Yonath, and others, including Brodsky, Berman, and Ramachandran, concentrated on the conformation of the collagen monomer. Several competing models, although correctly dealing with the conformation of each individual peptide chain, gave way to the triple-helical "Madras" model, which provided an essentially correct model of the molecule's quaternary structure although this model still required some refinement. The packing structure of collagen has not been defined to the same degree outside of the fibrillar collagen types, although it has been long known to be hexagonal or quasi-hexagonal. As with its monomeric structure, several conflicting models alleged that either the packing arrangement of collagen molecules is 'sheet-like' or microfibrillar. The microfibrillar structure of collagen fibrils in tendon, cornea and cartilage has been directly imaged by electron microscopy. The microfibrillar structure of adult tendon, as described by Fraser, Miller, and Wess (amongst others), was modeled as being closest to the observed structure, although it oversimplified the topological progression of neighboring collagen molecules, and hence did not predict the correct conformation of the discontinuous D-periodic pentameric arrangement termed simply: the microfibril. Various cross linking agents like dopaquinone, embelin, potassium embelate and 5-O-methyl embelin could be developed as potential cross-linking/stabilization agent of collagen preparation and its application as wound dressing sheet in clinical applications is enhanced.