They're so much more useful than you think – you can't live without them.
The mucus covers all uncovered human body surfaces and covers an area of more than 2,000 square feet!Mucus lubricates your eyes, nose and lungs;It prevents your stomach from digesting on its ownIt also protects against tooth decay, asthma, and inflammatory bowel disease, among others.
Katherina Ribbeck, a professor of bioengineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says most importantly, mucus can control microbes. Trillions of microbes live on and within your body. In fact, Ribek says, there are more microbes in the human body than human cells, and most of them live in mucus in the digestive tract.
Some microbes are good guys, and some are bad guys. Good substances are very important for your health and can help you absorb vitamins and digest food. However, pathogenic microorganisms in the population can cause infections and cause a variety of other problems (including even death).
Slime is part of the armor that protects you. It forms a habitat that allows beneficial microorganisms to thrive and protects you from harmful microorganisms. It tames dangerous microorganisms with the help of mucin, which is a molecule that looks like a vial brush and forms a mucus gel.
Ribbeck points out that in order to keep up with the regular attacks of pathogenic microbes and keep your armor strong, your body produces about a gallon of mucus per day.
In her biohydrogel lab, Ribbeck focuses on the basic mechanisms by which the mucus barrier excludes or allows the passage of different molecules and pathogens, and the mechanisms by which pathogens have evolved to penetrate the mucus barrier.
Over millions of years, our mucus has evolved the ability to control many of these problematic pathogenic microorganisms. It's an amazing thing," Riebeck said. "It's a miracle that we're alive. ”
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