The Possibilities Of Spider Silk

Golden+Spider+Silk+by+amandabhslater+is+licensed+under+CC+BY-SA+2.0

“Golden Spider Silk” by amandabhslater is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

By: Daniel Liu, Journalist

Spider silk is one of the strongest substances on Earth and is the second strongest biological material on Earth. Recently, scientists have been trying to convert this material into something that humans can use. One breakthrough scientists have made is spider silk armor. Extremely lightweight, four layers of spider silk can stop the same bullet that 33 layers of kevlar can. But, the main problem with spider silk is that there is so little of it. Spiders can only produce so much silk in a lifetime, which does not amount to much. But, scientists have been working on this problem and have come up with a few solutions, one of which being transferring the silk-making genes to a goat to produce more silk. Even though this problem, along with others, continue to trouble scientists, the future of using spider silk seems to be growing brighter each day.

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https://www.wearethemighty.com/gear-tech/body-armor-from-spider-silk?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1

http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/spider/page4.htm

https://phys.org/news/2010-05-scientists-goats-spider-silk.html