Nonuniform Internal Structure of Fibrin Fibers: Protein Density and Bond Density Strongly Decrease with Increasing Diameter.

ABSTRACT: The major structural component of a blood clot is a meshwork of fibrin fibers. It has long been thought that the internal structure of fibrin fibers is homogeneous; that is, the protein density and the bond density between protofibrils are uniform and do not depend on fiber diameter. We performed experiments to investigate the internal structure of fibrin fibers. We formed fibrin fibers with fluorescently labeled fibrinogen and determined the light intensity of a fiber, I, as a function of fiber diameter, D. The intensity and, thus, the total number of fibrin molecules in a cross-section scaled as D^1.4. This means that the protein density (fibrin per cross-sectional area), ρ_p , is not homogeneous but instead strongly decreases with f

SUBMITTER: Li W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5654258 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature