Department of Medicine & Surgery, Insubria University, Varese, Italy.
Department of Medicine & Surgery, Insubria University, Varese, Italy.
Int J Biol Macromol. 2018 Feb;107(Pt B):1668-1674. doi: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2017.10.037. Epub 2017 Oct 10.
For many decades the fibrillar collagens have been the subject of a remarkable body of ultrastructural research. The vast majority of the studies, however, were carried out on tendon or on tendon-derived material. For many reasons this reflects an obvious choice but at the same time it also is an unfortunate circumstance, because this flooding of tendon-related data can easily encourage the false confidence that all connective tissues are similar. The reality is quite the opposite, and a different fibrillar structure has been long time observed on collagen fibrils from different tissues, the most notable example being offered by corneal fibrils. The same architecture can be found in a number of disparate tissues and may actually be the prevalent one on a whole-body scale. Although these fibrils diverge from those of tendon in their architecture, size, D-period, composition, cross-linking and fibrillogenesis mechanism, their structure was the subject of rather sparse ultrastructural studies and even today their mere existence is often overlooked or ignored. This paper summarizes the main aspects of the structural biology of these forgotten fibrils.
几十年来，纤维胶原一直是大量超微结构研究的主题。然而，绝大多数研究都是在肌腱或肌腱衍生材料上进行的。出于许多原因，这反映了一个明显的选择，但同时也是一个不幸的情况，因为这些与肌腱相关的数据的大量涌入，很容易让人产生一种错误的信心，认为所有的结缔组织都是相似的。但事实恰恰相反，在不同的组织中，胶原纤维上已经观察到了一种不同的纤维状结构，其中最显著的例子是角膜纤维。这种结构在许多不同的组织中都可以找到，实际上可能在全身范围内更为普遍。尽管这些纤维在结构、大小、D-周期、组成、交联和原纤维形成机制上与肌腱中的纤维不同，但它们的结构只是相当稀疏的超微结构研究的主题，甚至在今天，它们的存在往往被忽视或忽略。本文总结了这些被遗忘的纤维的结构生物学的主要方面。
