Hagfish Slime Hagfish are primitive, eel-like creatures that spend most of their lives slithering along the ocean floor, scavenging dead and dying fish. They’re spineless, virtually blind, have no jaws and have barely changed over the last 300 million years. When attacked or threatened, they exude a gelatinous slime into the water that can quickly smother the gills and mouth of a predator. Hagfish slime is formed when seawater interacts with two different ingredients secreted by slime glands: mucin vesicles, which rapidly swell and burst in seawater and threads that are rich in a type of fiber called an intermediate filament (IF). Individual IF threads, are produced by gland thread cells (GTCs). They are arranged in yarn-like bundles called skeins which consist of around 15 to 20 conical layers of loops. As GTCs mature, the threads gradually increase in size, but they are organized in such a way that they can rapidly uncoil without tangling. When the skeins come into contact with seawater, the protein glue holding them together dissolves, causing them to unravel and release the elastic energy stored in the water. This transforms a mere teaspoon of slime into a beaker-full of the stuff in just a few seconds. Watch this video: https://youtube/watch?v=Bb2EOP3ohnE Please Like, Comment or Share.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 18:16:24 +0000
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