Word: collagenized
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Paleontologist Ho depends on neither time travel nor thermometers for measuring ancient body temperatures. Instead, he works with collagen, a protein found in human and animal connective tissue and skeletal structures. Aware that the proportion of an imino acid, hydroxyproline, is lower in the collagen of cold-water fish than in fish that swim in warmer waters, Ho reasoned that the composition of collagen in warm-blooded animals might vary with their body temperatures...
Searching through biological literature, Ho recorded the imino-acid content of the collagen from a variety of animals, ranging from man to whales, and compared it with their normal temperatures. There was an unmistakable and direct relationship. With the increase of each degree in body temperature, he discovered, there was a specific increase in the proportions of imino acids in collagen...
...Cold-Blooded. Assuming that the variation had been similar in prehistoric animals, Ho turned to late Pleistocene epoch (10,000 to 200,000 years ago) fossil remains containing well-preserved collagen. Chemically analyzing the collagen in fossil specimens recovered from Los Angeles' famed La Brea tar pits, he applied his formula and calculated the temperatures of such extinct species as the browsing ground sloth, the dire wolf, the short-faced bear and the saber-toothed...
Many of the most reputable physicians have given up. Before the ban, the Cleveland Clinic's Dr. Arthur L. Scherbel was getting significant and hopeful responses in scleroderma, or "hidebound disease," a disorder of collagen throughout the body that makes it difficult for the victim to clench his hands, and in many cases causes hideously painful fingertip ulcers. Dr. Scherbel has not used DMSO since the ban, except for patients who still have a supply. "We have tentative permission to use DMSO," he says, "but how do you get a drug company to release it?" Fearful of FDA reprisals...
...reconstituted collagen, the Japan Leather Co. uses odds and ends of calf skin left over when the hides have been cut for making shoes. After weeks of soaking and washing hide in various chemicals, including enzymes, to remove the linkage tails, Dr. Nishihara pours collagen into thin sheets resembling cellophane. The resulting membrane makes fine, easily digestible sausage casing. It also gave the Rogosin Labs' Dr. Rubin and Dr. Kurt Stenzel an idea for its first medical application-use in the artificial kidney, which has a filter membrane of sausage-casing cellophane. In laboratory glassware the collagen membrane...