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from the will-they-someday-weave-a-silk-tie? dept.
Producing synthetic spider silk isn’t the problem, according to Lewis, but the ability to do it at scale commercially remains a sticking point.
Another challenge is “weaving” the synthetic spider silk into usable products that can take advantage of the material’s marvelous properties.
“It is possible to make silk proteins synthetically, but it is very hard to assemble the individual proteins into a fiber or other material forms,” said Markus Buehler, head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, in an email to Singularity Hub. “The spider has a complex spinning duct in which silk proteins are exposed to physical forces, chemical gradients, the combination of which generates the assembly of molecules that leads to silk fibers.”
Efforts to reproduce spider silk have thus far failed to scale commercially, but the research has spawned potential applications in tissue regeneration and improved adhesives.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 12 2019, @01:57PM (3 children)
I made a shirt from spider silk but it made my skin crawl every time I wore it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 12 2019, @03:24PM
What??!!
That shirt should have made you want to swing around NYC, from building to building.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday April 12 2019, @05:42PM (1 child)
I think you're supposed to remove the spiders first.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @08:34PM
Right! Spiders out, ants in: https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/00000144-0a41-d3cb-a96c-7b4d82a80000 [nationalgeographic.com]
(I think that came via SN a while ago so thanks lentils, full circle)