Collagen sample preparation (1)
- Acid soluble: Works only for skin samples from young animals.
- Neutral buffer soluble: Works partially for samples after acid or pepsin solubilization.
- Pepsin soluble: Works for most of all samples.
Pepsin cleaves telopeptides from tropocollagen which effectively solubilize collagen from tissue. The solubilized collagen is called atelocollagen.
A heat treatment at higher than 41C denatured collagen which has high susceptibility to pepsin. The denatured collagen turns into small peptides by pepsin. All procedures must be under 4C if you need native form collagen, not gelatin.
1. R. Riemschneider, M. Z. Abedin, Pepsin-solubilized collagen from cow placenta. Die Angewandte Makromolekulare Chemie: Applied Macromolecular Chemistry and Physics. 82, 171–186 (1979).