Something charming

[Kunax]

SNOT, you know the greenish stuff that sometimes comes out ones nose, in a seamingly endless flow.

1. What is it?
2. Where does it come from?
2a. how much can be produces
2b. how much can be "stored"
3. Why does the immune system tricker something like snot, i does not seem
to do any good?
4. Why is it greenish?
5. Whats it made of?
6. And last but not least, why da hell does some people eat it?

Thanks.

p.s.
add your own snotty questions if you got'em

 

[korey]

Mucus is a "slimy" material that coats many epithelial surfaces and is secreted into fluids such as saliva. It is composed chiefly of mucins and inorganic salts suspended in water. Mucus adheres to many epithelial surfaces, where it serves as a diffusion barrier against contact with noxious substances (e.g. gastric acid, smoke) and as a lubricant to minimize shear stresses; such mucus coatings are particularly prominent on the epithelia of the respiratory, gastrointestinal and genital tracts. Mucus is also an abundant and important component of saliva, giving it virtually unparalleled lubricating properties (try sticking a piece of apple skin between your molars without saliva).

Mucus-secreting cells are widely distributed through the body. Goblet cells are abundant in the epithelium of the gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts, mucous glands in these same organs deliver their products through ducts into the intestine and respiratory tree, and many of the acinar epithelial cells in salivary glands secrete mucus.

Mucins are a family of large, heavily glycosylated proteins. Although some mucins are membrane bound due to the presence of a hydrophobic membrane-spanning domain that favors retention in the plasma membrane, the concentration here is on those mucins that are secreted on mucosal surfaces and saliva.

Mucin genes encode mucin monomers that are synthesized as rod-shaped apomucin cores that are post-translationally modified by exceptionally abundant glycosylation. Two distinctly different regions are found in mature mucins:

The amino- and carboxy-terminal regions are very lightly glycosylated, but rich in cysteines, which are likely involved in establishing disulfide linkages within and among mucin monomers.

A large central region formed of multiple tandem repeats of 10 to 80 residue sequences in which up to half of the amino acids are serine or threonine. This area becomes saturated with hundreds of O-linked oligosaccharides. N-linked oligosaccharides are also found on mucins, but much less abundantly.

The dense "sugar coating" of mucins gives them considerable water-holding capacity and also makes them resistant to proteolysis, which may be important in maintaining mucosal barriers.

Mucins are secreted as massive aggregates with molecular masses of roughly 1 to 10 million Da. Within these aggregates, monomers are linked to one another mostly by non-covalent interactions, although intermolecular disulfide bonds may also play a role in this process.

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From: http://arbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu/hbooks/molecules/mucins.html

 

[cosmictraveler]

Kunax..... you asked "6. And last but not least, why da hell does some people eat it?"


Probebly because they enjoy the taste of it!

 

[Kunax]

i just find it funny that somepeople, dig out huge green balls from there heads, studie them for a few seconds and then eat it.

anyway cosmictraveler, do you know what it tastes like, can you describe it for us ?

 

[Vortexx]

Isn't there some way that we can make some interesting valuable chemical from mucus by boiling it in nitric acid while adding frogslegs and shouting HOOPLA?

 

[one_raven]

6. And last but not least, why da hell does some people eat it?

Cuz it's considered rude to wipe 'em on the chair?
Someone else might sit there, y'know.

 

[Vortexx]

It could be that mucine is a way to fend of viruses by oversaturating diseases with binding sites?

Brossmer found that influenza A, the mumps virus, and Cholera RDE interacted with and split the milk trisaccharides in the same way that mucine is split by the pathogens. Kuhn and György found that the pathogens, which normally bind to receptor sites of the intestinal wall to infect the infant, bind equally well at sites on specific oligosaccharides found in the mother's milk. They therefore concluded that these oligosaccharides in human milk, colostrum and meconium compete with binding sites in the intestinal cell wall for the virus. An infant, whose intestines are saturated with the correct oligosaccharides, stands a far better chance of avoiding infection, thus giving it an opportunity to establish an immune system of its own at the beginning of its life outside of the womb.

From:
http://sun0.mpimf-heidelberg.mpg.de/History/Kuhn3.html

Eating your old mucin, completely with crippled bound viruses, could be the poor mans way of self-vaccination, EAT MORE MUCIN!!!

 

[Kunax]

thats one hell of a biografi, so many words and even more letters.

perhaps we can setup a production facility, to produce a cheaper vaccine, in one end people could "deliver" there mucin, which would come out as pills in the other end.
Ofcause it would need another name perhaps "Nicum" would do, they could even come in a natural color range from clear over green to a funky yellow