Biochemistry of Collagen

Abstract

Both the editorship and the roster of contributors practically ensure the general excellence of this Biochemistry of Collagen . An advanced treatise hewing closely to the title, it should be an invaluable source book in this active field. Clinical correlations are somewhat sparse but worth digging out. Covered are primary structure, molecular structure and packing into fibrils, cross-linking, biosynthesis, immunology, collagenases, molecular pathology, collagen and cell differentiation, and collagen model building. Some of these chapters are presented in excessive detail. While collagen is indeed ubiquitous and abundant, much of the collagen actually studied to date represents either small soluble fractions of the total bulk of collagen, or collagens derived from embryos, tissue cultures, or lathyritic animals and possibly not representative of the whole. The iron fist of consensus is a bit heavy at times: thus, the mode of collagen biosynthesis is racked into the Palade mold of protein for export at