Collagen soluble chemistry

Factors such as fiber diameter, compactness, and the difficult solubility of collagen would seem of importance in determining such properties as resistance to hydrolytic attack by enzymes. This inertness is probably not entirely derived from the chemistry of collagen but depends also on physical factors which prevent an enzyme from gaining access to its substrate. Pepsin, acting under acid conditions on swollen fibrils, is able to cause degradation (195), and increased temperature or physical maceration facilitates even the attack by trypsin in neutral or slightly alkaline environments (194, 200). 

As indicated above, collagen exists in fibrous form in tissues. However, varj ing amounts of fibrous collagen will dissolve in cold acidic or near neutral buffers or even water. This material is referred to as soluble collagen and usually repi sents only a small fraction of the tot collagen present in any given ti ue. However, )luble coils en has provided the sample used for mc t studio concerned wuth the chemistry of colleen and col-... 

Much of the knowledge of soluble collagen chemistry derives from initial papers by Tustanovskii (1947) and Orekhovich d al. (1948a,b) who demonstrated a reversible solubility of collagen fibrils that had dissolved in citric acid buffers (pH 3-4.5) and underwent reformation into collagen fibrils upon dialysis against water. 

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