In the last decade, scientists have made significant breakthroughs in both understanding and manipulating the blood-brain barrier. There are several good reasons for why they’d want to do this, including being able to apply critically important drugs directly to the brain. For medical professionals looking to treat conditions that can adversely affect the brain, this research has been potentially game-changing — and it’s helped them better understand how the brain works, full stop.
Among the recent findings when it comes to the inner workings of the brain is a paper published earlier this week at Nature. That study, which involved exploring the brains of mice, takes a deeper look into the blood-brain barrier and the components of it, which include “mucin-domain glycoproteins.” And if you’re looking at the word “mucin” and wondering if it’s connected to mucus, it is indeed. Mucin is one of the components of mucus, which should give you a sense of the more visceral qualities of the substance.
In an analysis of the paper, also published at Nature, Heidi Ledford described these mucins as forming “a water-laden, gel-like substance.” The mucins in this case can be found around the brain’s blood vessels; the scientists behind the paper found that this gel deteriorated as it aged, which was associated with reduced cognitive capacity in the mice being studied.
One of the paper’s authors, Stanford University biochemist Carolyn Bertozzi, told Nature that, after she and her colleagues had replenished the mucins on the mice’s brains, they found that the mice were better able to complete tests. “[T]hey do better on those tests after we restore the mucin barrier,” Bertozzi said.
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As Ledford notes, the findings of Bertozzi and her colleagues could prompt future research on mucins’ role in the brain and elsewhere in the body. Another doctor interviewed for the story, Gifu University Hospital’s Hideshi Okada, told Nature that he’d like to explore how mucins interact with the kidneys as people age. Could the path to improved aging involve some of the slimier parts of the body? It just might.
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