Collagen is widely distributed in various tissues of living organisms and is one of the basic proteins that constitute living organisms. The structure of collagen is more complicated than that of general protein and it displays a more stable property so that normal proteases have no significant effect to deal with it. There are only two typical enzymes have ability to hydrolyze collagen in situ

one is called matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) and another is bacterial collagenase. In this review the collagen and hydrolase are introduced in briefly

then the development process and the hydrolysis mechanism to collagen between matrix metalloproteinase and collagenase are presented

then the particular aspects of the different enzyme activities will be contextualized within relevant areas of application

mainly about therapeutics

food processing

environmental protection and tissue engineering. In the end the development of the present research and guide further potential research orientation of the system of collagen & collagenase is summarized.