Abstract
RECENTLY, Banga et al. 1 demonstrated that tendons of the tail of a rat spontaneously shortened and relaxed when they were placed in 40 per cent potassium iodide at room temperature. Aging influenced the length–time curves so that rapid contraction was followed by rapid relaxation in the young but slow relaxation in the old. Cross-linking in collagen has been a widely discussed concept of the effect of the aging process. If the development of more highly polymerized collagen is the effect of aging then tanning young tendons with formaldehyde, a cross-linking reaction, should ‘age’ them a certain amount. The following experiments were done to test this hypothesis.
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References
Banga, I., Baló, J., and Szabó, D., Acta Morph. Hungr., 6, 391 (1956).
Gustavson, K. H., “The Chemistry of Tanning Processes”, 264 (Academic Press, Inc., New York, 1956).
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Elden, H. R., Zachar, S. L., and Boucek, R. J., presented at 133rd Meeting of the American Chemical Society, San Francisco, Calif. (1958).
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Garrett, R. R., and Flory, P. J., Nature, 177, 176 (1956).
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ELDEN, H. Effect of Cross-linking by Formaldehyde on the Contraction–Relaxation of Rat Tail Tendon. Nature 183, 332–333 (1959). https://doi.org/10.1038/183332a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/183332a0
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