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Genetically Engineered Silkworms Spin Spider Silk

Posted by timothy on from the waiting-for-the-spider-silk-boxers dept.

disco_tracy writes "Silkworms have been modified to produce spider silk, creating a fabric that could be used in everything from bulletproof clothing to artificial tendons." For some reason, this is far less revolting to me than the idea of spider silk being milked out of goats.

5 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. A few more techs to go for Silksteel by rsborg · · Score: 3, Interesting
    From the Alpha Centauri archives:

    "Until quite recently, spider silk had the highest tensile strength of any substance known to man, and the name Silksteel pays homage to the arachnid for good reason."

    Commissioner Pravin Lal
    "U.N. Scientific Survey"

    Some of the best (sometimes prophetic) fictional quotes ever.

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  2. Opening cocoons by LongearedBat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So, when silk worms finally do make silk as strong as spiders' silk, then will those silk moths be able to open their own cocoons?

  3. FEH by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am tired of the ridiculous "ten times stronger than Kevlar" or "ten times stronger than steel" and such garbage.

    For the record: Kevlar is not particularly strong, compared to other high-end materials. What it is though, is ductile - that is, absorbs a nice amount of energy while being plastically deformed. Spider silk does this even better.

    Steel can be had in strengths that vary between as low as 200 MPa (bad cast iron) to 3000 MPa (piano wire).
    Kevlar is somewhere at 800 MPa or so - stronger than regular construction steel (235-420 MPa) but weaker than hardened sheet steel (900-1300 MPa).
    The strongest material you may encounter outside of a laboratory is glass fiber, which can reach strengths of up to 5000 MPa.
    Carbon fiber is weaker (~2000 MPa) than glass fiber, but it is more rigid - which is the sought after property most of the time.
    Titanium, while having some nice properties, isn't incredibly strong either - around 1000 MPa at best.

    Even when considering density, steel usually holds its own quite well - especially when designing things that are supposed to have a certain rigidity, where steel really shines - and while exotic materials may have advantages they are never along the line of "ten times", more like "two times" at best.

    I'm a mechanical design engineer and I am really not amused when people show me their titanium golf clubs and claim that it is ten times stronger than steel an cost a hundred times more than gold, or other preposterous claims like that. Titanium is $100/kg, tops.

    1. Re:FEH by zippthorne · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Similar thing with compressed gas cylinders (specifically scuba tanks). The wall thickness is *much* thinner for a steel tank than an aluminum one of similar pressures, so for the same mass of air and you can get away with a smaller tank and/or lower pressure. The resulting vessels end up being very close to the same mass despite aluminum's on-paper advantage in strength-to-weight ratio, which is killed by the maximum outer diameter that people are comfortable with handling.

      I'm still trying to figure out why steel scuba tanks cost *more* than aluminum ones, though, looking at the spot prices for each of those metals.

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  4. Re:Cool by mobby_6kl · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Studies have also shown a clear correlation between making wild claims and citing sources. The correlation is negative.