This video, we're going to continue to talk about chemical defenses by briefly focusing on sweat. Sweat glands prevent microbial growth through perspiration. Perspiration is the process of sweating, or in other words, the process of releasing sweat from the sweat glands on the skin. This release of sweat helps to lower the body temperature, and it can also help to remove microbes from the surface of our skin. Additionally, sweat contains many different types of chemicals, including an enzyme that we refer to as lysozyme. Lysozyme is an enzyme that degrades bacterial cell walls, and therefore it can help to protect us from pathogenic microorganisms that are trying to invade our bodies. Lysozyme, this enzyme, is also found in tears, saliva, urine, mucus, and tissue fluids. This chemical, lysozyme, can really be beneficial in helping to protect several different areas and regions of our body.
If we take a look at our image below at our map, notice we're focusing on the first line of defense, specifically the chemical barriers, and this time we're focusing specifically on sweat. Here in this image, we're showing you an image of the sweat glands. Notice that the sweat glands in this image are depicted here and here. Once again, they're able to release sweat onto the surface of our skin, which can help protect us in many different ways from invading microbes.
This here concludes our brief lesson on sweat as a chemical defense mechanism and lysozyme as a chemical defense mechanism. We'll be able to learn more about other chemical defenses as we move forward in our course. I'll see you all in our next video.