A Collage of Defense
We mainly curse mucus as we are blowing it from our noses or coughing it up from our lungs because of some allergy or ailment. However, mucus plays a key role in defending our bodies from illness. This is true of both our respiratory and our digestive systems. The tissue shown here is from the small intestine of a mouse; the blue spots are goblet cells, which produce protective mucus.
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DownloadA Collage of Defense
We mainly curse mucus as we are blowing it from our noses or coughing it up from our lungs because of some allergy or ailment. However, mucus plays a key role in defending our bodies from illness. This is true of both our respiratory and our digestive systems. The tissue shown here is from the small intestine of a mouse; the blue spots are goblet cells, which produce protective mucus.
What am I looking at?
This image shows tissue from the small intestine of a mouse. The blue spots are goblet cells (1). The purple spots are immune cells like macrophages, which fight invading pathogens (2). The yellow dots represent the nuclei of the cells in the surrounding tissue (3).
Biology in the background
All the food and drink that a mouse – or a human – consumes passes through its small intestine. Food and drink are rarely sterile, which means we also consume microorganisms, like bacteria and viruses, which can sometimes cause illness.
Fortunately, there are immune cells in our digestive tract that help protect us from these pathogens. One such immune cell is the macrophage, which recognizes, engulfs, and destroys pathogens and other potentially toxic substances. Macrophages are mobile and move throughout the body, cleaning up the debris that we accidentally but inevitably bring into our bodies.
A macrophage – in a mouse cell and a human cell alike – is about 20 micrometers across, or roughly four times smaller than the width of a human hair.
Technique
This image was produced using fluorescence microscopy.
Mindy Engevik, Medical University of South Carolina