THE collagen is a protein found naturally in humans and other animals, present in bones and connective tissue. But scientists had difficulty in explain how this protein can survive for so long present in dinosaur fossils up to 195 million years old.
The half-life (the time required for a quantity of matter to be reduced by half) of the peptide bonds that hold proteins together is 500 years. The difference in collagen bonds lies in a special interaction at the atomic level that protects the protein from water molecules — preventing water from breaking the bonds through hydrolysis.
The study that discovered this peculiarity of collagen was published in the journal ACS Central Science on Wednesday (4).
The resistance to water molecules occurs because a pair of electrons from the carbonyl group of a peptide bond is shared with the carbonyl group of another neighboring peptide bond. Since these two bonds become “joined” by the electron pair, water cannot enter the collagen structure and break the bond.
This content was originally published in Scientists explain how dinosaur collagen survived for thousands of years on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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