Tripeptide is a newer ingredient that has been making waves in anti-aging skincare. It’s thought to stimulate collagen production and promote skin cell regeneration, which may keep skin healthier and younger-looking for longer.
It’s also thought to help prevent aging signs by promoting cell communication with healthy cells. It’s a synthetic amino acid that can penetrate the skin’s surface and enter the deeper layers, where it may be able to stimulate collagen growth and improve skin texture.
This ingredient is available in a number of different forms and is gaining popularity as a key ingredient for anti-aging products. It’s available in a variety of skincare products, including the Peter Thomas Mega Rich Cell-4 firming cream for the eyes and iS clinical Youth Complex.
Using a technique known as atomic force microscopy, researchers have found that tri-b3-peptides consisting of b3-amino acids can self-assemble into distinct hierarchical structures when an lipid moiety is introduced at each of the three amino acid positions and the N-terminus. These peptide fibrils can either form twisted ribbon-like fibers or distinctive multilaminar nanobelts.
Intriguingly, a tripeptide with a long side chain can have more rotameric fluctuations than the same residue that has shorter residues. This could indicate that structural rigidity can result from a combination of bulkiness and good space filling between the amino acids in a tripeptide.
Among the most common amino acids, Methionine, Proline, Tryptophan and Glutamine appear to have a higher percentage of rigid tripeptides than in non-rigid or intermediate categories. Serine and Threonine, on the other hand, are a lot more frequent in non-rigid tripeptides than in the rigid or intermediate ones, which makes sense as these residues tend to have a higher polarity.