News The latest chemistry news, including important research advances, business and policy trends, chemical safety practices, career guidance, and more. Read More A snail’s mucus can do more than leave a slippery trail. It can lubricate movement, glue the animal to surfaces, fend off predators, and protect it from harsh conditions during dormancy. By examining secretions from Cepaea nemoralis, researchers have learned how the protein content and calcium chemistry of snail mucus can be tuned to produce materials with distinct properties (Science 2026, DOI: 10.1126/science.adx7367). C. nemoralis produces five types of snail mucus. Beneath its foot, the snail lays down slippery mucus for movement, while a thin film of adhesive mucus can fasten the rim of the snail’s shell to a surface. When disturbed, the snail releases either a sticky yellow slime or a mass of bubbles. During hibernation, the snail seals itself inside its shell with a mineralized mucus layer called the epiphragm. All the snail mucus contains water, glycoproteins, and complex carbohydrates. And a combination of proteomics, imaging, and staining techniques revealed collagen VI as a main structural component of the mucus. “We were very surprised by the proteomics results because of how similar the composition was throughout [these types], although they look and behave completely different,” says Franziska Jehle, a biomaterials researcher at Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces who led the study. What differed between the individual mucus materials was the individual and total protein concentration. For example, yellow mucus is roughly 4% protein, compared with about 0.3% for lubricant mucus, and the differences in protein content determine how the materials respond to shear stress. Calcium provides another means of tuning the mucus. Scanning electron microscopy and spectroscopy revealed tiny granules of amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC), a noncrystalline form of calcium carbonate, packed in the