We harvested our slime by letting our two snails crawl around inside of a rectangular plate, where we would dose them with some water in order to help them create the slime. When we felt like they have excreted enough slime, we would take them out and use a scraper to scrape off the slime from the plate and put it into a small tube.
For the manufactured slime, we weren’t given much information on how it was produced, all we knew was that it came from a different breed of snails and it’s intended purpose was for skin care.
While we are unsure if there were any liquid excretions present in our slime, we are certain that it didn’t have much effect on the slime itself. With solid waste, the snails made it clear that they were releasing this waste and we were able to remove it from our sample. We did have some slime samples that contained little amounts of dirt, but we were able to ask people around us about it and it was made it clear that the dirt will have no effects on the slime. However, we can’t fully rule out that these excretions didn’t have an effect on the slime since they do contain bacteria within it.
If there is ample evidence that snail slime is an effective replacement for some antibiotics, what would be some medical applications for the slime? What would be the method of ingestion, and what kind of infections do you think snail slime would be best for?
I am unsure of the best way for someone to ingest the slime into their system, I would assume that the best way would be for someone to drink it as a liquid. I would say the snail slime would be the best option when dealing with any gram-negative bacterial infections.
I would assume that it would be possible to do this with our type of snails. While different snail breeds contain different kinds of slime, the methods for obtaining their mucin should still be the same.
I would assume that it is possible to obtain mucin filtrate from our breed of snail. While different snails do have different types of slime, the methods for obtaining it should remain the same across most breeds.
Could you, if you’ve researched into it, further elucidate what is so beneficial about some of the “healthy compounds” you mentioned (eg. proteoglycan, glycoproteins) that made them appealing for you to test (other than snail slime having been implicated as having antibacterial properties)?
When it comes to proteoglycans and glycoproteins, we discovered from our research that proteoglycans provide hydration and swelling pressure, glycoprotein enzymes can add stability for the cell and help with cell-cell recognition, and the mucin itself has antibacterial properties against gram negative and gram-positive bacteria.
When we did our research on snails, it was stated that the majority of snails breeds all contained antibacterial properties within their slime. When we asked for our snails, we weren’t given the option of the breed, but the breed wasn’t important because of that reasoning. Now, different snail breeds may have stronger or weaker antibacterial properties, but we will have to do more research on that.
How did you harvest the slime from the Snails and how is manufactured slime produced?
We harvested our slime by letting our two snails crawl around inside of a rectangular plate, where we would dose them with some water in order to help them create the slime. When we felt like they have excreted enough slime, we would take them out and use a scraper to scrape off the slime from the plate and put it into a small tube.
For the manufactured slime, we weren’t given much information on how it was produced, all we knew was that it came from a different breed of snails and it’s intended purpose was for skin care.
How do you harvest the slime from a snail and how is manufactured slime produced?
What effect do you believe the dirt or snail waste excretions had if they did contaminate the harvested slime?
While we are unsure if there were any liquid excretions present in our slime, we are certain that it didn’t have much effect on the slime itself. With solid waste, the snails made it clear that they were releasing this waste and we were able to remove it from our sample. We did have some slime samples that contained little amounts of dirt, but we were able to ask people around us about it and it was made it clear that the dirt will have no effects on the slime. However, we can’t fully rule out that these excretions didn’t have an effect on the slime since they do contain bacteria within it.
If there is ample evidence that snail slime is an effective replacement for some antibiotics, what would be some medical applications for the slime? What would be the method of ingestion, and what kind of infections do you think snail slime would be best for?
I am unsure of the best way for someone to ingest the slime into their system, I would assume that the best way would be for someone to drink it as a liquid. I would say the snail slime would be the best option when dealing with any gram-negative bacterial infections.
Is it possible to obtain mucin filtrate from the same snails you collected slime from?
I would assume that it would be possible to do this with our type of snails. While different snail breeds contain different kinds of slime, the methods for obtaining their mucin should still be the same.
I would assume that it is possible to obtain mucin filtrate from our breed of snail. While different snails do have different types of slime, the methods for obtaining it should remain the same across most breeds.
Could you, if you’ve researched into it, further elucidate what is so beneficial about some of the “healthy compounds” you mentioned (eg. proteoglycan, glycoproteins) that made them appealing for you to test (other than snail slime having been implicated as having antibacterial properties)?
When it comes to proteoglycans and glycoproteins, we discovered from our research that proteoglycans provide hydration and swelling pressure, glycoprotein enzymes can add stability for the cell and help with cell-cell recognition, and the mucin itself has antibacterial properties against gram negative and gram-positive bacteria.
Do you think the type of snail determines if the mucus will have antibiotic properties or do all snails produce mucus with antibiotic properties?
When we did our research on snails, it was stated that the majority of snails breeds all contained antibacterial properties within their slime. When we asked for our snails, we weren’t given the option of the breed, but the breed wasn’t important because of that reasoning. Now, different snail breeds may have stronger or weaker antibacterial properties, but we will have to do more research on that.