Figure 1.

Structural hierarchy of type I collagen fibril. The fibril is drawn at two different spatial resolutions. While the lower-resolution cartoon highlights the repeating dark and light bands visible in TEM and AFM, the higher-resolution cartoon shows the two-dimensional arrangement of the triple-helices (green rectangles) within a fibril. The higher-resolution representation also outlines three representative crystallographic unit cells of the fibril. Note that a crystallographic unit cell is not a microfibril. To see this figure in color, go online.