AbstractIn their Bioessays review ‘Current views of collagen degradation’, Gillian Murphy and John Reynolds gave an outline of the molecular structure of the members of the collagen family and described their traditional role in providing stable tissue frameworks.1 This short review considers the relationship between the different members of that family and what gene structure reveals about their evolution. Mutation of the collagen structural genes has been discovered in patients suffering from brittle‐bone syndrome and other inherited connective tissue disorders, and here I attempt to rationalize these results into an overall concept of collagen gene mutation and evolution.