Scientists develop new programme for collagen synthesis

Scientists at Rice University in Texas have developed a new computer programme to detail the stable forms of collagen proteins for synthesis in the lab, which can be used for better drug design and treatment of disease, besides also having strong opportunities to apply in cosmetic formulations.

Collagen is a type of protein found widely throughout the body, which supports skin, internal organs, muscles, bone, and cartilage, reported cosmeticsdesign.com.

According to the researchers, the new programme has an ability to synthesise custom collagen in laboratory atmosphere, which could help find new ways to dig into its molecular structure and understand how it forms and interacts with biological systems.

The new programme, which forecasts the most stable structures of nanometer-sized collagen, was developed by the scientists Jeffrey Hartgerink, an associate professor of chemistry and of bioengineering, and Jorge Fallas, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington.

The researchers developed the new technology by making follow up on collagen creation and testing its details with their calculations.

Further, the new technology calculates the stability of each possible alignment of a given set of peptide strands, which aims to find the best matches of positively and negatively charged amino acids.

Hartgerink told cosmeticsdesign.com that if there is a positive charge in a peptide sequence, it will destabilise the triple helix, and it could be calculated as a minus 1.

"If we have a positive charge in a peptide sequence, it will destabilize the triple helix, and we score that as a minus 1," Hartgerink added.