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Structure of Collagen

Nature volume 174, pages 269–270 (1954)Cite this article

Abstract

A DETAILED X-ray study of collagen fibres obtained from different sources (namely, shark ray, rat tail tendon and kangaroo tail tendon) and a re-examination of the published wide-angle patterns indicate that the unit cell of collagen is hexagonal with a = 12–16 A. and c = 9.5–9 A., the actual values depending on the moisture content. The essential difference of this indexing from those reported earlier1–3 is that the 2.86-A. meridional arc is here interpreted not as a true meridional reflexion, but as arising from the superposition of two close non-meridional reflexions. A calculation of the angular spread of the arc, using the tilt of the c-axis deduced from the spread of the equatorial reflexions, confirms this interpretation. Table 1 shows the good agreement between the calculated and observed spacings of an air–dried and a wet specimen from kangaroo tail tendon.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Madras, Guindy, Madras, 25

    G. N. RAMACHANDRAN & G. KARTHA

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  1. G. N. RAMACHANDRAN
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  2. G. KARTHA
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RAMACHANDRAN, G., KARTHA, G. Structure of Collagen. Nature 174, 269–270 (1954). https://doi.org/10.1038/174269c0

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