How the Sugars In Spit Tame the Body’s Unruly Fungi

mucus can be found in the mouth, gut, reproductive tract, and intestines. A purification process can make the slimy goop look better from the start. "After you remove particulates and microbes, it's a beautiful, beautiful clear gel, like egg white," says Ribbeck, a professor of bioengineering. I think it is really beautiful.

She cares about spit because she is trying to understand how glycans, tiny sugar molecule hidden inside mucus, work to keep a particular organisms health. mucus is important in maintaining human health According to Ribbeck and others, the glycans job is critical. Sometimes harmful if they outcompete one another or become virulent, they specialize in managing microorganisms that can be beneficial, but can also be harmful if they out compete one another. Glycans make sure that each section of the orchestra plays in harmony.

In a study published this month in Nature Chemical Biology, Ribbeck and her colleagues showed how glycans keep a fungus from getting problematic. In the case of C. albicans, the line between friend and foe is ambiguous. A rounded, yeast-like structure can turn into a thread-like shape when virulence is involved. While immunity can be contributed to by the fungus, it can also lead to yeast infections or a systemic infections of the bloodstream.

Sing Sing Way, a physician-scientist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center who was not involved in the study, has researched the benefits of shape shifting candida. Way says that complex microbes like Candida have co-evolved with other mammals. There are strategies that are good for both. He thinks that we can exploit the relationship between the two to keep them on good behavior.

The mucus stops other microbes from becoming dangerous. The scientists wanted to know how it worked in the case of C. albicans.

They need a lot of stuff. It is difficult to collect large volumes of mucus. It is a very valuable material. The team collected three different types of mucus using different methods, one of which was aspirating human spit. They put the mucus in a well plate filled with 96 holes.

They found that the mucus stopped the fungi from adhering to the plate. C. albicans appeared rounder when the mucus was present than when it was long. The mucus may be able to stop the fungus from sticking to bodily surfaces or forming biofilms, which are stringy, intertwined layers of the fungi that are associated with infections.