Collagens are principal constituents of connective tissues. They are hydrolyzed during development, wound repair, and remodeling of the extracellular matrix. Dysregulated collagenolysis is active in inflammatory diseases such as atherosclerosis, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, periodontitis, and liver and kidney pathologies. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) 3 play key roles in these processes (1-3). Mutagenesis has established the importance of the V-B loop (joining -strand V and helix B) in collagenolysis by MMP-1 (4). Residues at the C-terminal end of this loop in MMP-8 were also implicated in collagenolysis (5) and triple helical peptidase activity (6).Binding of an inactivated MMP-1 to an intact collagen fibril likely unwinds the triple helix at the cleavage site to provide access for an active MMP-1 catalytic domain to hydrolyze individual chains (7). The direction of collagen triple helices at the active site is unknown, but the orientation can be hypothesized to be the same as in linear peptide substrates that run antiparallel to -strand IV (8, 9). Single chain peptides from the ␣1 chain of type I/III collagens were soaked into crystals of MMP-12 and MMP-8 catalytic domains, and snapshots of bound hydrolysis products were obtained (8).However, neither crystallography nor NMR data representative of interactions with collagen have been reported because of technical limitations. More generally, structural studies of complexes of enzymes with their substrates have been rare presumably because of catalytic turnover and affinities lower than those for transition state analogues. Several biologically active, self-assembling triple helical peptide (THP) mimics of collagens have been developed. These THPs have facilitated numerous biochemical and cell biological studies otherwise infeasible with insoluble, intact collagen fibrils. THPs are successful in reproducing the cleavage sites of MMPs in collagens I, II, III, V, and XI and in reproducing rate dependences on intact triple helical structure (10, 11). Fluorogenic labeling of THPs has facilitated quantitative comparisons of the triple helical peptidase activities of a variety of MMPs in solution and in cell culture assay (6,11,12). The affinities of MMP catalytic domains for triple helices range from 1 to 80 M (6, 11-13). Collagenolysis involves several MMP functions that include initial nonspecific binding and orientation of collagen fibrils (14, 15), manipulation of collagen fibrils with the C-terminal hemopexin domain (16) and catalytic domain (7), unwinding of triple helices within fibrils, and ensuing hydrolysis of single chains from the melted triple helix (7). THPs are not suitable for modeling the initial binding, orientation, and manipulation of full-length collagen assembled into large, insoluble fibrils (6, 11). They are too small to participate in these higher order events (7). Nonetheless THPs have proven themselves to be outstanding substrates for detailed characterization of the triple helical peptidase activities of MMPs and other metalloprotein...