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Assembly in vitro of the native collagen fibril is a multistep process involving an initial intermediate of unknown structure, linear growth of thin filaments, lateral growth to form the fibril, and stabilization by covalent crosslinks. A model for the structure of the fibril is proposed consisting of a substructure of five-stranded microfibrils laterally compressed to place molecules in cross section on a near-hexagonal lattice.
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Karl A. Piez (1982) studied this question.
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