Multifunctional snail mucus comes in five different types

Amazing stuff!

"... One of the world’s most impressive multi-purpose tools just might be snail mucus—that slimy secretion that leaves glistening trails across gardens. The brown-lipped snail, native to central Europe, is a true jack-of-all-slimes. This gifted gastropod produces multiple types of mucus with different properties, from the slippery mucus that helps the snail move to a foamy, defensive slime thought to deter predators.

How do these snails do it? To find out, scientists ... spent rainy days collecting snails they found on campus. Once in the lab, the team examined the various types of mucus the critters produced.

They found that, while all the slimes used collagen as a main ingredient, the concentration of that collagen varied, with calcium and other ions also determining each slime’s unique properties .

More collagen and calcium, for example, gives rise to the stiffer, stickier mucus that helps snails cling to surfaces,

while tiny calcite crystals harden the protective mucus the animals use to seal themselves inside their shells during hibernation. ..."

"To the point:

• An ordinary organism: The slime of the garden snail (Cepaea nemoralis) is a multifunctional biomaterial, as it can be extremely sticky or extremely slippery depending on its function. The garden snail is the most common snail species in Europe and can also be found on the Max Planck Campus in Potsdam-Golm.
• A molecular building block system: The snail uses the same molecular building blocks to produce different types of mucus. It varies the exact composition depending on whether it uses the mucus for locomotion, adhesion, protection, or defense.
• Bio-inspired: The discovery could advance the development of environmentally friendly adhesives, functional coatings, and medical materials.

..."

From the editor's summary and abstract:

"Editor’s summary

Organisms can fabricate materials with completely different mechanical properties using a limited number of building blocks, such as the way that

spiders can spin multiple types of fibers for different parts of their webs.

Gabler et al. studied the composition and structure of different mucus-based materials produced by the terrestrial snail Cepaea nemoralis. They found that the different types of mucus share many similar protein constituents and that collagen VI is a main structural component. Amorphous calcium carbonate is added into the different materials, where it can function as an ion source, a stabilizing component, or a mineral precursor depending on the mucus type. ...

Abstract

Mucus is known as a viscous fluid; yet, snails manufacture various mucus-based materials with much higher cohesion and tailored to different and even antagonistic functions, including lubrication, adhesion, protection, and defense. To gain insight into this versatility, we use a multidisciplinary approach to investigate five different mucus-based materials produced by the snail Cepaea nemoralis.

Our results demonstrate that snails use collagen VI as a main structural component and add amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC) during mucus secretion.

ACC functions as an ion source in wet mucus types, most likely for cross-linking, or as a mineral precursor in dry mucus types. These findings shed light on the versatility of these viscoelastic materials, which are able to switch between very different properties on the basis of calcium and protein content."

ScienceAdviser

Following the Trail of Slime (original news release) "Snails can adjust the chemical composition of their mucus to make it liquid, solid or sticky as needed."

Calcium tunes snail mucus–based materials to multiple functions (no public access)

Calcium tunes snail mucus-based materials to multiple functions (preprint, open access)