Collagen in its twisted, curly form with no skin stress. Image credit: The Jacob School of Engineering at UC SDMay 4 2015 - 11:45am, Inside Science News Service Lisa Marie Potter, Contributor Inside Science ) -- Skin has to be flexible enough to jump, crawl, and kick with us. Their findings are the first to show that collagen, the most abundant protein in skin, moves to absorb stress and prevent the skin from tearing. They also plan to study resistance in skin more similar to humans, such as pig's skin. It could help make synthetic skin more life-like, although Meyers warns that more work is needed to truly copy real skin.