Product Description

Nutragen® collagen is known as the standard of all collagens for purity (>99% collagen content), functionality, and the most native-like collagen available.  Nutragen®  is isolated from bovine hides sourced from the only controlled, closed herd in the United States. Advanced BioMatrix’s manufacturing processes comply with stringent quality standards that have proven to yield unsurpassed lot-to-lot consistency.

Nutragen® collagen is approximately 97% Type I collagen with the remainder being comprised of Type III collagen. Nutragen® collagen is supplied at approximately a 6 mg/mL concentration to provide an extremely firm gel.  The concentration for each specific lot is provided on a Certificate of Analysis that is available with the purchase of each product.  Nutragen® is soluble atelo-collagen in 0.01 N HCI, therefore, the pH is approximately 2.0.

Nutragen® collagen is ideal for coating of surfaces, providing preparation of thin layers for culturing cells, or use as a solid gel.  Nutragen®  collagen is provided in a 50 mL volume and is contained in user-friendly packaging for use and storage.  Nutragen®  is sterile filtered and is supplied as a ready to use solution.

Parameter, Testing, and Method Nutragen® Type I Collagen #5010
Sterilization Method Filtration
Extraction Method Enzyme - atelocollagen
Form Solution
Package Size 50 mL, 1000 mL
Storage Temperature 2-10°C
Shelf Life Minimum of 6 months from date of receipt

Collagen Concentration - Biuret

5.8-6.8 mg/mL

Collagen Purity - Silver Staining

>99%
pH 1.9-2.1
Kinetic Gel Test (Minutes) <40
Gel Formation Tube Test (Minutes) <40

Fibrillogenesis (Absorbance Units)

>0.5

Electrophoretic Pattern - Coomassie Blue

Characteristic
Sterility - USP modified No growth
Endotoxin - LAL <1.0 EU/mL
Osmolality (mOsmo H2O/kg) <35
Cell Attachment Assay Pass
Source Bovine Hide
Hydrogel Young's Modulus E (Pa) Characteristic

Directions for Use

Recommended Volumes for 2D Coatings or 3D Hydrogels

Download the full PDF version or continue reading below:

Coating Procedure

Note: Use these recommendations as guidelines to determine the optimal coating conditions for your culture system.

  1. Remove required quantity of collagen from the bottle and dispense into a dilution vessel.
  2. Dilute Nutragen® in water to ~50 to 100 µg/ml (~1:30). A 0.01 N HCl solution may also be used.
  3. Swirl contents gently until material is completely mixed.
  4. Add appropriate amount of diluted Nutragen® material to the culture surface ensuring that the entire surface is coated.
  5. Incubate at room temperature, covered, for 1-2 hours. Aspirate any remaining material. Alternatively, incubate at room temperature until surface is dry.
  6. After incubation, aspirate any remaining material.
  7. Rinse coated surfaces carefully with sterile medium or PBS, avoid scratching surfaces.
  8. Coated surfaces are ready for use. They may also be stored at 2-8°C damp or air dried if sterility is maintained.

3-D Gel Preparation Procedure

  1. Slowly add 1 part of chilled 10X PBS or 10X culture media to 8 parts of chilled collagen solution with gentle swirling.
  2. Adjust pH of mixture to 7.0–7.5. Use of sterile 0.1 M NaOH is recommended. Monitor pH adjustment carefully (pH meter, phenol red, or pH paper). 
  3. Adjust final volume to a total of 10 parts with sterile water.
  4. To prevent gelation, maintain temperature of mixture at 2-10°C.
  5. To form gel, warm to 37° C. For best results allow approximately 40 minutes for gel formation.

Product Q & A

Please review our collagen hydrogel whitepapers found here: https://advancedbiomatrix.com/3d-collagen-hydrogel-stiffness.html

Please visit our collagen gelation diagnosis page: https://advancedbiomatrix.com/collagen-gelation-diagnosis.html

We completed a study to show that DNA is completely destroyed at pH 2, and demonstrated that our collagen products do not contain DNA.

The collagen is fully hydrolyzed. The amino acid analysis is done using the Waters AccQ-Tag derivatization method. During the acid hydrolysis step, asparagine (N) is converted to aspartic acid (D) and glutamine (Q) is converted to glutamic acid (E). Tryptophan (W), if present, is destroyed during acid hydrolysis. Experimentally, one can determine the picomoles (pmol) of each amino acid per injected detected using amino acid standards.For the concentration determination, the total number of pmol of each amino acid is summed to get the total pmol of the 18 amino acids detected. The total pmol amino acids is divided by the theoretical number of amino acid residues in collagen based on the published sequence. The result is the pmol of collagen injected. The result is then multiplied by the dilution and 300,000 is used as the collagen molecular weight to get to mg/mL. The molecular weight of collagen is not well agreed upon.

Diluting with 1X PBS (rather than water or 0.01 N HCl) would have an effect for coating purposes.   It would change the pH of the diluted collagen solution from acid to neutral pH. The pH change will transform the collagen molecules from a molecular form to a fibrillar form; and then the nature of coating surface will be changed from a monomeric coating to a fibrillar coating.

The major collagen molecular species in our Type I collagen products are monomers (approx. 70%), but there are dimers, trimers and a few percentages of oligomers too (approx. 30%) with some minor amounts of collagen fragments. The collagen monomer is a rod shaped molecule with 300 nm in length and 1.5 nm in diameter. The dimer, trimer and oligomer are 600 nm, 900nm and even longer in length respectively. According to the coating procedures, the collagen molecules are attached to the charged polystyrene surface randomly by charge or affinity in acid conditions during the 1-2 hrs incubation period at 37°C, and any unattached materials are removed by aspiration and rinsing. Therefore, the coated surface is a single layer of collagen monomer, dimer, trimer and oligomer mixtures. The thickness of the mono-molecular layer is dependent on how those molecules are attached on the surface. The coating density thickness would generally be characterized as a 1 molecule thickness which could be ranging from a few nanometers to a few hundred nanometers with the whole surface being covered by collagen.

The net charge of Type I collagen products’ (PureCol®, Bovine Collagen and VitroCol®, Human Collagen) molecule is directly related to the pH.  At an acidic pH, the amino acids (zwitterions) along the collagen molecule are positively charged, making the entire collagen molecule positive. At the isoelectric point (or zone) of collagen, around pH 7-8, the amino acids along the collagen molecule are positively and negatively charged, making the net charge of the collagen molecule close to zero. At a basic pH, the amino acids along the collagen molecule were negatively charged, making the entire collagen molecule negative.

Further, the nature of the charge of the collagen coating surface will be dependent on the type of coating applied. For a monomeric collagen coatings when the collagen is applied under an acidic pH condition, the surface is positively charged. If the surface is rinsed with pH neutral buffer or media then it will change the charge of the collagen surface net charge close to zero. For a 3D gel coating, the collagen prepared under neutral pH; the net charge of the collagen surface is close to zero.

Using rotary shadowing technique under transmission electron microscopy, it was found that our collagen, on average, consists of approximately 80% monomers, 13% dimers, trimers, and oligomers with the remaining 7% collagen fragments.

Yes. The collagen molecule in PureCol, Nutragen, VitroCol, and all of our other Atelo collagen products were prepared from native collagen matrix by pepsin treatment under controlled conditions to remove the non-helical portion, telo-peptides, only and the helical portion is intact. In this case, the enzymatic active sites for MMP (Matrix Metalloproteinase), such as for Mammalian Collagenase Matrix Metalloproteinase 8 (MMP-8), on the molecule was preserved.

These pepsin treated collagen products should behave as native intact collagen.

TGF beta would have been digested with the pepsin enzymatic digestion step. It was undetectable by SDS PAGE silver stain as well. We didn’t do any specific measurements by ELISA however but presences of TGF beta is not anticipated.

We primarily use the Biuret method, but we also use BCA, AAA, and hydroxyl-proline assays.

- Collagen solutions that are frozen tend to have issues forming 3D hydrogels, and will likely not work. The solutions should still be good for 2D coatings. 

- Collagen solutions that are left out at room temperature for extended periods of time may show signs of degradation, which will affect the formation of 3D hydrogels. It is likely still fine for 2D coatings. 

Our recommendation is this: If you are using the product directly for a publication, we highly suggest buying a new bottle if the one you have was compromised. 

In the publication "Fibroblast Promotes Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma Cells Invasion through Mechanical Barriers in 3D Collagen Microenvironments," they reported the porosity of FibriCol® type I atelocollagen hydrogels prepared at various concentrations, as reported below:

1 mg/ml = 5.7 + 2.3 μm

2 mg/ml = 3.7 + 1.5 μm

4 mg/ml = 1.3 + 0.7 μm

8 mg/ml = 0.8 + 0.4 μm

 

We can say that our coating saturates the available culture surface with a dense layer of collagen that is stable and cannot be washed off.

The “coating density” is represented by an array of molecules packaged at maximum, area-filling density, in a mono-molecular layer onto the surface.

The absolute mass of coated collagen per surface area depends on the Stoke’s radius and shape of the specific ECM being coated, yielding coating densities in the range of  0.2 – 0.4 micrograms of protein per square centimeter of available surface.

Product Applications

Read our Collagen Hydrogel Shear Modulus whitepapers

The graph below demonstrates gelation kinetics of our collagen hydrogels. The collagen was neutralized according to respective protocols and placed in specialized containers within the 37°C chamber of the rheometer. Shear Modulus G' (Pa) is shown on the Y axis compared to Time (minutes) on the X axis. All of the below products are in inventory and are available for order.

Product References

References for Nutragen®:

Tanic, J., et al. "Adseverin modulates morphology and invasive function of MCF7 cells." Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA)-Molecular Basis of Disease (2019).

Rosell-García, Tamara, et al. "Differential cleavage of lysyl oxidase by the metalloproteinases BMP1 and ADAMTS2/14 regulates collagen binding through a tyrosine sulfate domain." Journal of Biological Chemistry (2019): jbc-RA119.

Berger, Anthony J. Decoupling the Properties of the Physical Microenvironment: The Design and Application of a Gelatin-Methacrylate/Collagen Composite Hydrogel. Diss. The University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2018.

Berger, Anthony J. Decoupling the Properties of the Physical Microenvironment: The Design and Application of a Gelatin-Methacrylate/Collagen Composite Hydrogel. Diss. The University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2018.

Renkawitz, Jörg, et al. "Nuclear positioning facilitates amoeboid migration along the path of least resistance." Nature568.7753 (2019): 546.

Szulc, Daniel Andrzej, and Hai‐Ling Margaret Cheng. "One‐Step Labeling of Collagen Hydrogels with Polydopamine and Manganese Porphyrin for Non‐Invasive Scaffold Tracking on Magnetic Resonance Imaging." Macromolecular bioscience(2019): 1800330.

Formica, Florian A., Goncalo Barreto, and Marcy Zenobi-Wong. "Cartilage-targeting dexamethasone prodrugs increase the efficacy of dexamethasone." Journal of Controlled Release295 (2019): 118-129.

Dubois, Fatéméh, et al. "A role for RASSF1A in tunneling nanotube formation between cells through GEFH1/Rab11 pathway control." Cell Communication and Signaling 16.1 (2018): 66.

Čermák, Vladimír, et al. "RNA-seq of macrophages of amoeboid or mesenchymal migratory phenotype due to specific structure of environment." Scientific data 5 (2018): 180198.

Product Certificate of Analysis

No result for .

Product Disclaimer

This product is for R&D use only and is not intended for human or other uses. Please consult the Material Safety Data Sheet for information regarding hazards and safe handling practices.