Kamil is a longevity scientist in Bryan Kennedy’s lab at National University of Singapore, and brings up a point that we should consider (as we gobble down collagen):
Most ingested elastin or collagen is broken down to amino acids and very small peptides before absorption. A tiny fraction of elastin-derived dipeptides can enter the blood intact, but we currently have no evidence that the specific, pro-aging elastin fragments from the Nature Aging paper (e.g., VGVAPG “E-motif”) survive oral digestion and reach systemic levels comparable to those that shorten lifespan in mice. The risk signal is theoretical at this point, not demonstrated.
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Yes, very small elastin-derived peptides (e.g., dipeptides) survive digestion and enter blood.
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No current evidence that the pro-aging hexapeptide motifs like VGVAPG (E-motif) themselves are present in blood at significant levels after oral supplementation in humans; nobody has actually looked carefully.
See full analysis here: https://chatgpt.com/share/692bc5b8-f514-8008-a3ca-5cec35023acd
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jnorm
#22
They did test collagen fragments in this study and found no shortening of lifespan, although of course it’s just one of many possible k-mers:
COL fragments were purchased from Scierbio, produced by solid-phase peptide synthesis. The sequence is EKAHDGGR, a carboxyl-terminal peptide of type Ⅰ COL that is a marker of degenerative musculoskeletal diseases in mice and human
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