Collagen fibrils and elastic fibers in rat‐tail tendon: An electron microscopic investigation

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Abstract

Abstract Earlier studies by the authors showed that the collagen fibrils in rat‐tail tendon have a bi‐modal distribution of fibril diameters from a time shortly after birth through to the onset of maturity at about 3–4 months. Present work has extended those observations for rats up to the age of 2 years. Histograms of the fibril diameter distributions for mature tail tendon and direct electron microscope observations show that the fibrils break down as the tendon ages. Further work on the constant diameter subfibrils of diameter 140 Å described previously, has confirmed that these are part of the elastic fibers present in tendon at all ages. It has been shown that there is relatively little variation in the collagen fibril diameter distribution as a function of the position of the specimen in the tail, and as the measured percentage of the area taken by the collagen fibrils present at any particular point. Estimation of the fibrillar collagen content of rat‐tail tendon as a function of age indicates that it increases steadily from birth and reaches a maximum at the onset of maturity, beyond which the fibrillar collagen content appears to remain constant.

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