Nearly 10% people and 30% older people suffer from a dry mouth. It may sound strange but we still don’t exactly understand how saliva lubricates the mouth. Hence we have not been able to find right solutions for dry mouth. A new interdisciplinary team comprising experts from nanoscience, food colloid science, mechanical and chemical engineering led by university of Leeds have uncovered the mechanism by which human saliva lubricates the mouth. The study published demonstrates that the high lubrication properties of saliva is a result of electrostatic self-assembly between mucin proteins and positively charged non-mucinous small-molecular proteins.