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What is Collagen?
The most important building block in the entire animal world, collagen is the tie that binds the animal kingdom together.
Life is a string of complex molecules: polymers.Nature's most abundant protein polymer is collagen.More than a third of the body's protein is collagen.Collagen makes up 75% of our skin.The more science learns about the body, the more integral we see collagen to be.
Collagen acts as a scaffolding for our bodies.Controls cell shape and differentiation.Is why broken bones regenerate and wounds heal.Why blood vessels grow to feed healing areas.
The Collagen mesh providesthe blueprint, the road map and the way.Collagen is the fibrous protein constituentof skin, cartilage, bone, and other connective tissue.
At this stage of our knowledge, we've found 13 kinds of vertebrate collagen, plus some smaller molecules looking like collagen spare parts. Members of the family, we suspect. Each type has evolved to serve a distinct purpose. Collagen varies depending on the anatomical region. From muscle to bone to cartilage to blood vessels to nerves to various parts of the skin, which itself is the largest organ in the body.
The differences among these collagen siblings come at the ends of each collagen molecule. It's as though Nature created specified arms able to share their fingertips with the tips of different molecules in appropriate cells. That's how they connect. But all collagen middles are the same. Three strands of repeating amino acids coil themselves, left-handed, into the unique collagen triple helix. Then these coils weave themselves right-handed into a cable, like small steel wires braided into the cables of a suspension bridge. In fact, collagen has a greater tensile strength than steel. Presumably, this complex structure was devised by nature to be invulnerable to the circulating enzymes and other materials in the body. Nature accomplished this purpose superbly which is why no other enzyme (of the many thousands in the body) but a "collagenase" can break it into its component parts.
When the body needs to build any new cellular structure as in the healing process, for example, collagen and/or collagen fragments play a central role. Although the role of collagen as a scaffolding has been known for some time, we now know that collagen controls cell shape and differentiation, migration, and the synthesis of a number of proteins. This is why broken bones regenerate and wounds heal. Why blood vessels grow to feed healing areas. The collagen mesh provides the blueprint, the road map and the way.
(Fish)Collagen