3 villains in the peptide story – Part 2

Julian Voss-Andreae’s sculpture Unravelling Collagen (2005), stainless steel, height 11 ft 3 in (3.40 m). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So here is the story: Peptides similar in composition to collagen resemble collagen degradation fragments. When these peptides are introduced into the skin, they trick the body into believing that the degradation pathway is active. To compensate, the synthetic pathway is activated by the body and Voila, you are young again!

Penetration (Photo credit: Man Alive!)

There are 3 villains in this story. The first one is Mr Stability. The peptides are not very stable in their base formula. Mr Penetration makes the passing of these peptides across the stratum corneum difficult. The third and the most lethal one Mr Destroyer, dismantles these peptides into amino acids as soon as they penetrate. So reaching the bounty of youth is not so easy as it seems.

The hero is bound to have strong and muscular brothers in Hindi cinema, who will come together in the end because they share the same tattoo or sing the same song. Likewise if you set out to find Tetra or Pentapeptides similar to collagen, you have millions of them. So how does the director find the hero from a million possible heros?

Hey, don’t ask questions now. You shall know the entire plot of the story towards the end.

To cut a long story short our hero is called Pal-KTTKS known as Matrixyl to ‘aam janta’. He is in love with the beautiful GAG Hyaluronic Acid (HA). But tragedy strikes!  HA belongs to a different religion! Unlike other GAGs, HA is not even a peptidoglycan. She is just a polysaccharide with no peptide in her!

I have to take a commercial break here. Will be back again soon.

Read the full series here.