{"id":238782,"date":"2026-06-11T22:07:03","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T03:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/scientists-discover-collagen-the-human-bodys-most-abundant-protein-is-liquid-like-inside-cells"},"modified":"2026-06-11T22:07:03","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T03:07:03","slug":"scientists-discover-collagen-the-human-bodys-most-abundant-protein-is-liquid-like-inside-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/scientists-discover-collagen-the-human-bodys-most-abundant-protein-is-liquid-like-inside-cells","title":{"rendered":"Scientists discover collagen, the human body\u2019s most abundant protein, is liquid-like inside cells"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-discover-collagen-the-human-bodys-most-abundant-protein-is-liquid-like-inside-cells.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Collagen, the protein that builds skin, bones, tendons and organs, exists inside cells as a liquidlike droplet rather than the long, rigid rod seen in textbooks over the last half-century, according to a new study from the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona.<\/p>\n<p>The finding, published in the <i>Journal of Cell Biology<\/i>, is the first direct observation of how the most abundant protein in the human body, which accounts for around a third of total protein mass, exists naturally inside living cells.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInside a cell, collagens are not rigid molecules as one had assumed. They are in fact very pliable, taking a liquid condensate form much like oil in a drop of water,\u201d explains ICREA Research Professor Vivek Malhotra, senior author of the study at the CRG in Barcelona.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Collagen, the protein that builds skin, bones, tendons and organs, exists inside cells as a liquidlike droplet rather than the long, rigid rod seen in textbooks over the last half-century, according to a new study from the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona. The finding, published in the Journal of Cell Biology, is the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}