Alien Slime

Could this video be footage of an alien landscape? Unfortunately, the truth is more icky than interstellar. It is in fact a 3D rendering of mucus. That’s right, good old phlegm. This particular specimen was produced by a person suffering from cystic fibrosis, and consequently is much more fibrous and elastic than the mucus of a healthy individual – notice the thick rope-like strands running across the sample. The increased elasticity, which makes clearing the lungs, and breathing, more difficult was thought be caused by excessive secretion of mucin proteins (red) and an abundance of DNA (green). But scientists have now learned that increased oxidation – resulting from persistent inflammatory cell activity – stimulates the mucin proteins to cross-link into long stringy polymers. Encouragingly, the discovery suggests that the use of inhaled reducing agents, which reverse oxidation, might help liquefy the dangerously congealed phlegm and assist its removal from the lungs.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Video by John Fahy and colleagues
• University of California, USA
• Copyright held by The American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Research published in Science Translational Medicine, February 2015