Magnetic alignment of collagen during self-assembly.

Magnetically induced birefringence is used to monitor the thermally induced self-assembly of collagen fibrils from a solution of molecules. The magnetic torque alone can, at best, only orient the fibrils into planes normal to the field direction. Nevertheless, the gels formed have a high degree of uniaxial alignment, probably due to the additional ordering effects of surface interactions. Thus magnetic orientation is potentially useful in the study of fibrillogenesis and in the production of highly oriented collagen gels.