Muci

I talked with these latter also. As to the ones who had been cast down, they said that they related to nasal mucus and that they were dull and stupid, and also without conscience. So they were entirely lacking in more inward perception. The woman I saw (as mentioned above) was a sign of these infiltrations. I was also allowed to talk with them, and they were amazed that anyone had a conscience. They were absolutely ignorant of what conscience is. And when I told them that it is a more inward awareness of what is good and true, and that behavior contrary to it brings an anxiety, they did not understand. This is the nature of people who correspond to the mucus that clogs up the nose, and is therefore expelled.[…]There are also children, but children of several years old, and that they do not like being there when the infiltrators—the muci—approach.

More specific indications of the similarity between muci and SMs were given by the adsorption tests (Fig. 2). For Mytilus and Mercenaria, the adsorptions of the anti-mucus antibodies on the powders proved to be efficient, as this treatment reduced the reactivities with the SMs by 80% and 90%, respectively. However, when the adsorbed antibodies were tested against the respective muci, up to 30% and 40%, respectively, of the original reactivity had been removed. All the adsorptions were sufficiently specific, as they did not affect the reactivity between an admixed “unreactive” antiserum and its antigen. / These results show that striking similarities exist between the muci and the SMs in each one of the three species. These materials are by no means identical, however. The adsorption experiments suggest that in Mytilus and Mercenaria about one-third to one-half of the determinants of the muci are also present in the SMs, whereas the other part is unique to the muci. / Characterization of Antigenic Determinants. Proteinase K alone failed to digest any proteinaceous fraction of the muci and the SMs (Fig. 3).

These authors concluded that the cross-reactivity recorded between the muci and skeletal water-soluble matrices suggested that these different secretory products had a high degree of homology. There was also some evidence that a partial homology existed between the water-soluble matrices and the muci in the three investigated species, which supported the hypothesis that the calcifying machinery of the Metazoa is derived – at least in part – from anti-calcifying molecules of the excretory systems. This homology might be the result of a convergent evolution of mucins and organic matrix proteins towards a similar objective – that is, to avoid uncontrolled calcium carbonate precipitation. However, this cannot be generalized to all corals since the results obtained by Puverel et al. [57] with antibodies against the organic matrix of the coral stylophora pistillata were not in agreement with this hypothesis, as no labeling of the oral ectodermal cells producing mucus was observed.

A generally overlooked component of marine chemodiversity is mucus, sometimes constantly and abundantly produced by epithelial goblet cells of cnidarians, and also found in other sessile invertebrates, and also in fish. No two muci are alike.

The authors found that the muci produced by a coral, a mussel, and a clam were chemically very similar, indicating inheritance from a common ancestor earlier in the Precambrian. The mucus produced by invertebrates has a number of known functions.