When we get an injury, what is happening to our skin/flesh/body on a molecular and atomic level? How are they separating?
In: Biology
Cells are held in their structure by a big mesh thing made of a protein called collagen. Both cells and collagen are microscopically tiny, so when you get a wound, what’s happening is a whole bunch of cells are being torn apart and a whole bunch of that collagen scaffold is being destroyed. The remnants of this are quickly cleaned up to prevent necrosis (too much dead cell fragments can cause other cells nearby to start dying), then movable cells called fibroblasts swarm to the wound and start rebuilding the collagen mesh. Meanwhile, nearby stem cells divide rapidly to create the new skin cells that will fill the cell spaces in this collagen.
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