Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav Snails are well-known for their mucus. The slime is highly valued as an anti-inflammatory and anti-aging ingredient in certain skin care products, and snails can secrete different kinds of mucus with properties tailored to specific functions. A team of German scientists has determined a recipe for how snails achieve that so-called tunability: Collagen and calcium work in tandem to achieve the varying mechanical properties, according to a new paper in the journal Science.
Snail mucus is mostly water; it’s the mucins (glycoproteins) and complex carbohydrates that give it that slimy, viscous texture. In addition to cosmetics, the mucus holds great potential for drug delivery. In 2020, scientists found that combining snail slime from a common garden snail with gold nanoparticles helped accelerate wound healing and exhibited anti-inflammatory properties in mice. Most relevant to this latest paper is a 2023 study on garden snail slime that identified three distinct types of secreted mucus: a hydrating version to protect its skin, one that acts as an adhesive glue, and a third that serves as a lubricant so the snail can more easily glide across a surface.
The team focused their research efforts on the grove snail/lemon snail (Cepaea nemoralis), which they deemed well-suited as subjects because the snails secrete five different kinds of mucus with distinct functions. As with the garden snails, there is one that acts as a lubricant to help with locomotion and an adhesive mucus to help the snail stick to various surfaces. Then there’s a mucus layer known as the epiphragm that the snail secretes when it hibernates in winter, which contains calcite and effectively seals the shell to protect the snail from predators and harsh environmental conditions.
C. nemoralis also secretes two different kinds of protective mucus when disturbed. One is a sticky yellow mucus similar to that produced by certain mollusks that is highly resistant to breakage or tearing. The other is a bubbly substance scientists believe is secreted to smother small predators and/or wash them out of the shell.
The researchers analyzed all five types of mucus using various techniques, including proteomics, X-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction, cryoscanning electron microscopy, and liquid chromatography. They found that all five kinds of mucus share a similar protein composition and that collagen IV is the main structural component. It’s the different quantities of protein and the addition of amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC) that determine a given mucus’s distinct mechanical properties. The two defensive kinds of mucus had the highest number of proteins.
Those results “indicate that these proteins are used to tune the degree of cross-linking and therefore their network density, which has an immediate effect on their mechanical properties,” the authors concluded. “Each mucus type shows a distinct and complex hierarchical structure that is influenced by the processing of the mucus material.”
Furthermore, calcium “is actively secreted together with the mucus, serving as an ion source for cross-linking or a mineral precursor for reinforcement.”
Science, 2026. DOI: 10.1126/science.adx7367 (About DOIs).
