The precipitation of toroidal collagen fibrils

The morphology of aggregates of calf-skin tropocollagen, precipitated by continuous injection into neutral phosphate buffers at 35 degrees , has been studied by electron microscopy. Although most of the collagen is precipitated as normal native fibrils, a small proportion forms closed toroidal structures having the usual native band-interband pattern. Theoretical considerations, based on elastic energies in a general microfibril model, predict that the toroids should have a simple super-helical structure, and this is not inconsistent with the observations. From the theoretical energies it was possible to estimate a crude lower limit of 3kcal./mole for the free energy of association of the tropocollagen macromolecules.