Visualizing collagen fibril growth.

Collagen fibrils are among the most abundant protein polymers in living organisms. While the longitudinal packing of molecules in the fibrils has been agreed on for many years, there is continuous disagreement over the lateral packing. In this work, we describe a set of computer graphics programs that can be used to visualize fibril packing and simulate fibril growth. An example of a model and simulation are presented.