Morphometric analysis of collagen: a comparative study in cow and pig skins

Light and electron microscopic studies were conducted on dermis samples tak en from different regions of adult cows and pigs to determine whether there is a correlation between subfibrillar-architecture and collagen fibril dia meter in dermis tissue. Dermis thicknesses, collagen fibril diameters, subf ibrillar architecture diameters, and angles of the helical arrangement of s ubfibrillar architectures were measured in all dermis samples. The results showed that the differences between subfibrillar architecture diameters in dermis samples from different regions of the same species were not signific ant and that the diameters of subfibrillar architectures in dermis samples were similar (22-28 nm) in the two species (cow and pig) examined in this s tudy. These findings therefore suggest that the collagen fibril diameter de pends on the number of subfibrillar architectures in each fibril.