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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 Nov 4.
Published in final edited form as: Science. 2018 May 4;360(6388):eaao2189. doi: 10.1126/science.aao2189

Figure 8.

Figure 8

A scheme of hierarchical organization in bone. For levels VII-XII (green) see Reznikov et al. (4, 29, 62). Both ordered and disordered motifs of lamellar bone comprise mineralized collagen fibrils (VI) that are 80-120 nm thick and form a continuous network. Collagen fibrils are composed of quasi-hexagonally packed microfibrils (V), each of which incorporates multiple staggered triple helices (IV) that in turn are formed from repetitive chains (III) of amino acids (II). Collagen levels V to II are discussed in detail by Orgel et al. (5, 35, 39, 63, 64). Collagen panels III and IV are courtesy of Dr. Joseph Orgel. The inorganic component of the mineralized collagen fibrils (VI) itself incorporates several nested structural motifs, listed as follows in decreasing order of complexity: mineral aggregates (V), stacks of platelets (IV), platelets (III) and acicular crystals (II).