Abstract
We measured the Young’s modulus at temperatures ranging from 20 to for a collagen fibril that is taken from a rat’s tendon. The hydration change under heating and the damping decrement were measured as well. At physiological temperatures 25 to , the Young’s modulus decreases, which can be interpreted as an instability of the collagen. For temperatures between 45 and , the Young’s modulus first stabilizes and then increases when the temperature is increased. The hydrated water content and the damping decrement have strong maximums in the interval 70 to indicating complex intermolecular structural changes in the fibril. All these effects disappear after heat-denaturation of the sample at . Our main achievement is a five-stage mechanism by which the instability of a single collagen at physiological temperatures is compensated by the interaction between collagen molecules.
- Received 27 July 2008
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.048101
©2009 American Physical Society