This isn't something that worries the general population. As one of my neighbours once said, "It's not something a normal person thinks about." We all take it for granted that when we step out of the bath we don't immediately start leaking water - which is most of our body - through the skin. Equally, we don't expect to swell up and explode in the bath, osmosis being what it is. Why is skin waterproof? Who cares?
The waterproofing of skin is an interesting problem for which nature has engineered an ingenious solution. It might not be the only solution but there's probably a reason for the madness. As to who cares, the answer is that a small but dedicated band of skin geeks cares. It's like the crazy people who conceived of laying submarine cables across the Atlantic. It's nuts and yet we're obsessed. Like submarine cables, the commercial implications are incomprehensible: if somebody invents an array of microneedles capable of penetrating the Stratum Corneum and delivering a drug, some crazed zealot could assassinate anybody by laying a large Velcro-like pad filled with suxamethonium chloride on them. Naturally, I'm jumping to the most bizarre implications.
Me, I'd like to have a Velcro-like array of microneedles through which I could inject triamcinolone acetonide, an anti-inflammatory steroid I now do through 30 gauge needles, themselves a miracle of engineering, into all kinds of inflammatory conditions of the skin. We could use less drug to better effect if we had such technology. Other important things like vaccines could also be delivered. Further, we might be able to treat common conditions like hand dermatitis to better effect, not with the injections but with some kind of intelligent barrier modification.
But that's not really why the geeks are interested. We're interested because it's cool.
The cool thing is that nature has figured out a way of doing whatever it has to do with whatever it has to hand. Feathers come to mind. I mean, there's a crazy idea.
First we have multi-celluar organisms in the sea that crawl out onto land and don't die due to leakage. Then, some of these use the same device - skin - to become aerodynamic. If you suggested that outcome during the early stages of evolution you would have been laughed out of the room. You'd also be right.
So instead of flight we have waterproofing. Not as sexy for sure, but essential.
...to be continued.
