Disarm, Do Not Destroy: teacher key

Boogers and Snot, grade 12 edition, written for 12th grade and up. Mucus may not kill germs so much as disarm them. Follow the pig-stomach experiments, the sugar-brush model and the nose's two-hour shifts to the questions that science has not answered.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What happened when MIT scientists stripped the sugars off mucins from pig stomachs?
   • The mucins lost their water-soaking and slippery qualities (answer)
   • The mucins killed more bacteria
   • The mucins turned into cilia
2. Why does it matter that mucins disarm bacteria without killing them?
   • It makes bacteria more likely to resist
   • It makes resistance less likely and spares helpful bacteria (answer)
   • It means mucus does nothing
3. What did the 1977 Mayo Clinic study measure?
   • Mucus color in 50 people
   • Cilia length in 7 people
   • Nose airflow every 15 minutes for about 7 hours in 50 people (answer)
4. How long did the 2016 study find the nasal cycle lasted while people were awake?
   • About 4.5 hours
   • About 2 hours (answer)
   • About 28 minutes
5. According to one idea, why might the nasal cycle exist?
   • To make one side colder
   • To keep the nose from getting too dry on one side (answer)
   • To make mucus yellow
6. In this passage, what is a microbiome?
   • A kind of cilium
   • A part of the stomach
   • The community of microbes that lives in the nose (answer)

Words

• mucins: mucus gel proteins
• surfactants: slippery film makers
• microbiome: community of microbes
• autonomic: automatic body control
• resistance: pushback
• rhinotillexomania: nose picking