Reductionist strategies aim to understand the mechanisms of complex systems by studying individual parts and their interactions. In this review, we discuss how reductionist approaches have shed light on the structure, function, and production of a complex biomaterial – hagfish defensive slime. Hagfish slime is an extremely dilute hydrogel-like material composed of seawater, mucus, and silk-like proteins that can deploy rapidly. Despite being composed almost entirely of water, hagfish slime has remarkable physical properties, including high strength and toughness. While hagfish slime has a promising future in biomimetics, including the development of eco-friendly high-performance fibers, recreating hagfish slime in the lab has been a difficult challenge. Over the past two decades, reductionist experiments have provided a wealth of information about the individual components of hagfish slime. However, a reductionist approach provides a limited understanding because hagfish defensive slime, like most biological phenomena, is more than just the sum of its parts. We end by providing some thoughts about how the knowledge generated in the last few decades might be synthesized into a working model that can explain hagfish slime structure and function.

还原论策略旨在通过研究单个部分及其相互作用来理解复杂系统的机制。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了还原论方法如何阐明复杂生物材料——盲鳗防御粘液的结构、功能和生产。盲鳗粘液是一种极稀的水凝胶状材料，由海水、粘液和丝状蛋白质组成，可以迅速展开。尽管几乎完全由水组成，但盲鳗粘液具有非凡的物理特性，包括高强度和韧性。虽然盲鳗粘液在仿生学方面具有广阔的前景，包括开发环保的高性能纤维，但在实验室中重建盲鳗粘液一直是一项艰巨的挑战。在过去的二十年来，还原论实验提供了大量关于盲鳗粘液各个成分的信息。然而，还原论方法提供的理解有限，因为盲鳗防御粘液与大多数生物现象一样，不仅仅是其各部分的总和。我们最后提供了一些关于如何将过去几十年中产生的知识综合成一个可以解释盲鳗粘液结构和功能的工作模型的想法。