[winkx]

I came across this structural formula on some skin product. Please help me to identify it.

And from this, is it possible to know what type of collagen is used as the ingredient? Or whether it is effective?

Thanks!

[azmanam]

The structure is nonsense.  It violates valence rules, common sense, and net charge rules.

What skin product is it from?  Can you take a picture and upload it so we can see exactly how they drew it?

[winkx]

oh gosh!! Or could it just be a marketing gimmick to trick people like me?

I found this product online. They say it's from France. And the formula is found on the front of the product. And, what is the active collagen about?



Sorry for the poor image quality.

[Borek]

This is what you call "artistic creation".

[azmanam]

Collagen is quite real and quite important to wrinkles.  Collagen is a long protein which can bundle with other pieces of collagen to form a kind of 'collagen rope' which gives skin strength as well as elasticity.  When it starts to naturally break down over time, you get wrinkles.  see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collagen

Here's why the molecule is nonsense

1) it violates valence rules.  Hydrogen is only capable of making one bond.  Period.  Thus a bond drawn to "H2" is not possible.  That's not to say "H2" is an impossibility.  When 1 hydrogen atom bonds to another hydrogen atom, you get "H2" which is the hydrogen gas of Hindenburg fame.  But "H2" cannot be bonded to anything else - like a complex structure drawn.

2) It violates common sense.  Apart from the H2 (and the Ca discussed later), the structure is totally plausible.  It is not uncommon for compounds to be tethered to bio molecules (like proteins or pharmaceutical drugs) to change their behavior or make them suitable for another purpose or something.  What I have problems with is that 6-membered ring (the hexagon) where there is a bond coming out of every vertex (in chemistry, a vertex or the naked end of a line is assumed to be a carbon atom, thus the 6-membered ring is assumed to be all carbon atoms, a cyclohexane).  6-membered rings with substitution like that is more commonly a benzene ring, a cyclohexane ring just looks kinda weird.  Furthermore, it is unlikely (and really hard to physically synthesize) that there would be 6 things coming off that ring.  1 or 2 or maybe 3 is plausible.  6 is very unlikely.

3) It violates net charge rules.  Ca stands for calcium - a totally natural metal essential for life.  It's never just calcium metal, though, it's always a calcium ion.  A calcium ion has a +2 charge.  Because it has a +2 charge, it needs 2 negative charges in order to balance to 0.  It's ooooooookk (but inaccurate) to draw a bond from carbon to calcium.  It's plausible (but highly unlikely) that carbon could have a -1 charge with calcium as it's counter ion.  But that only gets rid of 1 positive charge, calcium still has another +1 charge unaccounted for.  There could be 2 of these compounds associated with that one calcium ion, but that's not depicted.  As such, the charge is not balanced and can't exist as drawn.

The structure is nonsense, drawn to make the company look very scientific, but really shows how naive they are.  Keep your eye out for these 'structures'.  you'd be surprised how many of them look really scientific, but are complete nonsense.

[winkx]

Thanks azmanam for the v detailed ans! even though I don't understand them completely.

I also followed your link and I realized that collagen cannot be absorbed through the skin which means that many products I've been using are useless. Wasted my money! and many people out there are still unaware of it.

[408]

But "H2" cannot be bonded to anything else - like a complex structure drawn.

It can be bonded to transition metal centres where the sigma bonding orbital in H2 donates to an empty d-pi orbital on the metal.  It is considered one extreme between metal dihydrogen complexes and metal dihydrides.

But in this case, it is absolute bull.