The collagen fibril: the almost crystalline structure.

The structure of collagen fibrils has intrigued many investigators over the years. A crystal structure has been available for some time, but the crystal structure has been difficult to reconcile with other observations about collagen fibrils such as their roundness and their growth from paraboloidal tips. Several alternative models recently have been suggested, but none of them fully account for all the data. One recent approach to solving the fibrillar structure is to define specific binding sites on the collagen monomer that direct self-assembly of monomers into fibrils. Copyright 1998 Academic Press.