"Microbes colonize our body surfaces from the moment of our birth," Gordon said.
Gas exchange occurs across the gill and also across various other body surfaces, such as the lining of the atrium.
In exfoliative cytology, cells shed from body surfaces, such as the inside of the mouth, are collected and examined.
For residents of colder climes, this is not a happy time of year for body surfaces that depend upon moisture to remain pliable, comfortable and intact.
Salt secretion via specialized gill cells occurs in marine vertebrates that constantly absorb salt through thin membranes of their oral, respiratory, and body surfaces (see respiration).
The thin, vertical, Etruscan idol-like figures developed by Giacometti showed his repugnance toward rounded and smooth body surfaces or strong references to the flesh.
They are so adapted to living on body surfaces and in body cavities, surrounded by other bacteria, that many could not be cultured and grown in the lab.
He emphasized that a full skin exam for melanoma should be head to toe: the scalp (with hair parted by a hair dryer on cool setting) and all body surfaces, including the underarms, buttocks, genitals, palms, soles and nails.
When a spore is inhaled by a grazing animal, or slips through a break in the skin, it is swiftly engulfed by a macrophage, a type of cell that patrols the body surfaces for invaders.
Professor Christopher Potten, who has died aged 71, was a pioneer in a topic that, 40 years after his first studies, remains central in human biology: the organisation of cellular renewal in the epithelial tissues that line our body surfaces.
Some swimming families (Corixidae, Notonectidae) dive deeply but must surface periodically to replenish air supplies either stored in chambers formed against body surfaces by the folded wings or entrapped by rows of dense hairs folded against the body.
