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masklinn t1_j328cyx wrote

> or do you have like a secret mucus receptical that just decides to empty into your sinuses?

Mucus is a compound built from a small amount of specific proteins (mucins) and a lot of water.

So "all the snot" mostly comes from the water in your body, the gelling agent can be produced in pretty small quantities by mucous membranes, specifically the nasal mucosa, and even more specifically the goblet cells of the nasal mucosa. The nasal mucosa produces small quantities of mucin on a permanent basis (like other mucous membranes) in order to protect itself, trap debris, and move things along, but when you suffer from an infection of the nose one of its (possible) reaction is to ramp up mucin production, leading to significant amounts of mucus.

Hagfishes are a good way to demonstrate how fast and how much mucus can be produced as they use it as a defense mecanism (their body is lined with mucin glands, and when threatened they start releasing it in the environment, which is water): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5PGZRxhAyU

An other (maybe somewhat less gross) example is making jellies (as in gelatin desserts not fruit preserves). "Standard firmness" for gelatin products is apparently 1/4 ounces (30g) gelatin to 2 cups (472mL = 472g) water. That's a 15:1 ratio of water to gelatin by mass[0], and that sets hard, it's not runny like mucus is.

[0]: note that "ready" flavoured gelatins (e.g. your jello) will have a much lower ratio, because the powder contains sugar and flavorants, not just gelatin

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Snule t1_j32h3z5 wrote

Never ceases to amaze how someone always knows this niche information and can produce a great link to explain exactly like they mean as you did with the Richard Hammond video. On top of that, make it super easy to understand and enjoyable too!

Great reply, thank you.

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fuzzygondola t1_j32vrd5 wrote

Many answerers don't know a lot about the subject at the time of reading the question, but get intrigued and just start reading about it. It's pretty fun actually, you get to learn it yourself first and then hone your writing skills by distilling the information into an easy to read comment.

I read of a study which concluded that teaching others immediately after learning something new is the most reliable way to retain the information. Personally I believe it is too!

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Alexis_J_M t1_j358iiu wrote

Yes yes yes, the best way to learn something is to teach it.

(Assuming you don't just pass on wrong information.)

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slouchingtoepiphany t1_j331d9p wrote

It's funny because I intended to provide some of the information that u/masklinn (in much less detail, of course), but saw that he/she had already done a superb job. Still, I want to say something, so I'll mention that the particular, slime like feel of the mucins derives from the heterogeneous, O-linked glycoproteins (i.e., carbohydrate chains linked through an oxygen atom to a protein). These carb moieties have a negative charge on them that causes water molecules to be electrostatically attracted to them, making them very "wet" and slippery.

PS: The UN u/Snule is perfect for this conversation. :)

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interwebtalkerhere t1_j33aynf wrote

It amazes me that there are scientists who are like “yes, I study this ONE specific snot molecule… and we still barely know anything” 😆 (and yet they know SOOOOO much)

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DFHartzell t1_j36h04z wrote

This is one of the single greatest features in social media history. Non-redditors are missing out.

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--_pancakes_-- t1_j32hk9z wrote

But what is the function for this excess production of this mucus?

Is this actually a useful mechanism against diseases like the common cold? Or is it just a trait carried over from the likes of the fish you mentioned in your comment, which actually utilised the mucus production as a defence mechanism?

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masklinn t1_j32iffy wrote

We're getting outside of my meagre knowledge so hopefully a 'doc or other biology-inclined specialist will swing by. I know that in e.g. the lungs it's the only way to evacuate junk (e.g. dead viruses and immune cells), but for the nose I don't know if it's functional or if it's just a side-effect of the inflammation of the mucosa which is not deadly enough to get weeded out by natural selection.

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Naive_Piglet_III t1_j32tqpo wrote

I remember talking to a medical student who explained that it also acts as a first line of defence. It has the ability to bind potential parasites in the nasal region where they potentially get killed by specific immune cells or are expelled via cough / sneeze.

Some virus (most common cold) have also evolved to survive this which is why you catch a cold if someone sneezes on you.

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3chzpizza4brkfast t1_j35nd6q wrote

RN here. Mucous is secreted when your immune system detects a pathogen (virus or bacteria) and WBCs among other immune cells make up mucous therefore engulfing it and killing it or blowing it out your nose

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Spider-Ian t1_j35sbdw wrote

Do you know anything about sinus infections? Like why is the mucus such a different texture? And why does it keep building back up after it's emptied for like a week?

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[deleted] t1_j32inpp wrote

[removed]

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--_pancakes_-- t1_j32kw85 wrote

Thanks for the explanation. I always wondered whether mucus production shooting up was a side effect of flu or a defence mechanism against it.

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Peiple t1_j32mm6x wrote

Most of the symptoms you get when you’re sick aren’t due to the actual pathogen, they’re because of the body’s response to them. Fevers, cough, runny nose, lethargy, inflammation, sore throat, and decreased appetite are all ways your body works to keep you safe. Even though they’re not pleasant, it’s worse for the pathogen than it is for you. The severity of the symptoms is determine more by how much immune response you need. The influenza virus causes very very few (if any) of the symptoms you commonly associate with “the flu”.

There are cases where this doesn’t happen and you instead just see the actual pathogen’s effects—a good example of that is syphilis, which doesn’t trigger any immune response. Unlike flu/cold/etc you don’t get many symptoms at all (no fever/cough/runny nose/lethargy/etc), until you start experiencing bone decay and brain damage from the bacteria eating away at your internals. Pretty cool in a scary way.

Edit: and one cool addition to this is the story of how they initially treated syphilis—they discovered that if you inject a patient with malaria, the immune response triggers a high fever, which kills the syphilis. That could be followed up with antimalarials to “cure” the patient…although it had a pretty high fatality rate and was also developed through some questionable ethics. Luckily penicillin was discovered soon after, which was significantly safer. Moral of the story is that being sick helps you get better and not die.

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mschuster91 t1_j32opaa wrote

And the problem is that there seem to be [https://sph.unc.edu/sph-news/antibiotic-resistant-form-of-syphilis-bacterium-identified-in-patients-in-cuba/](some strains of syphilis) on the rise that are resistant to antibiotics. It's only time until there's a truly multi-resistant strain, and infections are on the rise in general over all STIs - and as we've seen with covid, the more infections the more mutations.

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Peiple t1_j32q3yp wrote

That’s true, although syphilis in general has a really tough time evolving resistance to antibiotics. It’s not necessarily true that we’ll inevitably get bacteria with resistance to all antibiotics—bacteria have a significant trade off to evolving resistance, since it usually decreases their overall fitness compared to wild type. That’s why you’ll typically see bacteria revert to sensitivity in the wild, and most multi drug resistant bacteria are only acquired from environments with lots of antibiotics (hospitals).

There’s also some drugs that are really difficult for bacteria to evolve dual resistance to—in S. aureus for example, it’s nearly impossible for them to simultaneously resist methicillin and vancomycin.

More infections = more mutations is also not necessarily true, especially since syphilis is a bacteria and covid a virus. A lot of bacteria have more proofreading materials to prevent mutations, and bacteria that like to form biofilms will have lower rates of mutation. Bacteria also have longer competition against themselves and the microbes around them as they grow coupled with a lower reproduction rate, which enforces more selective pressure than on viruses.

Viruses don’t have a lot of these problems because they reproduce and mutate significantly faster, and they’re not susceptible to antibiotics. Antiviral treatments are a lot harder to target because viruses rely on the host more than bacteria, so a lot of the “targets” are things our body also needs. That’s one of the reasons a lot of antivirals have more common side effects and than antibiotics.

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emptybottleofdoom t1_j32n2xq wrote

Yeah, if the pathogens or irritants move around randomly, and 90% of the volume they end up in is mucus rather than body tissue, and they get flushed, that's good for us.

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charlesfire t1_j32rgei wrote

>So "all the snot" mostly comes from the water in your body, the gelling agent can be produced in pretty small quantities by mucous membranes

Wait. Does that mean we could make snot-based jello?

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chemipedia t1_j33ejs9 wrote

First of all, I’m a little mad that I read that and therefore absorbed the idea. Second of all, how dare you! Now I’m curious about snot-based jello?!

The solidifying effect of animal gelatin is from the molecules twisting in a way that catches on to one another as they cool down. They form sites that allow for the phase-shift from liquid to solid as the temperature lowers. With mucins, the phase shift is more complex and we apparently don’t fully understand how it happens, but we think it involves polymerization stabilized by disulfide bridges and it’s definitely more complex than a temperature-based physical reaction like with gelatin.

So like … it depends on what you have in your kitchen? Maybe? Would it still be considered jello? Also, I couldn’t find a good answer on max viscosity of mucin gel formation so I’m unable to say whether it would be more like traditional jello or more like snot pudding.

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Casper042 t1_j34dwts wrote

Isn't that basically the definition of a booger?
Snot-based Jello.

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samanthasgramma t1_j35bgni wrote

Fabulous response. Thank you. It explains "I'm a snotty mess." so well. In the future, I shall say "My mucin glands are in self defense mode."

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Ohgodgethelp t1_j33vtlh wrote

So what ratio of commercial gelatin to water would produce snot?

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Hannover2k t1_j35ir9s wrote

I'm guessing things like antihistamines suppress the production of this mucus? What would happen if this process was turned off completely? Is this mucus produced in response to something physically in the nose that it's trying to flush out? I could understand allergens and such as those are physical particles but what about when you have a cold/flu? What's actually being flushed out? I just got over a flu where I was blowing out tremendous amounts of liquid so I'd love to know what my nose thought it was flushing out, aside from what it was producing itself.

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The_Etch t1_j36w1se wrote

Explains why I clear my nose of tablespoons of mucus several times a day, wondered where it all cane from (i blame air conditioned buildings

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