Elastin since they become crosslinked into elastin fibres immediately after their synthesis by the cell and during their export into the extracellular matrix. Each tropoelastin consists of a string of 36 small domains, each weighing about 2 kDa in a random coil conformation. The protein consists of alternating hydrophobic and hydrophilic domains, which are encoded by separate exons, so that the domain structure of tropoelastin reflects the exon organization of the gene. The hydrophilic domains contain Lys-Ala (KA) and Lys-Pro (KP) motifs that are involved in crosslinking during the formation of mature elastin. In the KA domains, lysine residues occur as
Collagen helix – this should not be confused with the right-handed alpha helix. These three left-handed helices are twisted together into a right-handed triple helix or "super helix", a cooperative quaternary structure stabilized by many hydrogen bonds. With type I collagen and possibly all fibrillar collagens, if not all collagens, each triple-helix associates into a right-handed super-super-coil referred to as the collagen microfibril. Each microfibril is interdigitated with its neighboring microfibrils to a degree that might suggest they are individually unstable, although within collagen fibrils, they are so well ordered as to be crystalline. A distinctive feature of collagen is the