Source: "The Reinvention of Silk," New York Times
(Above) Silk creations by Tufts University researchers include a coil made of silk substrate and gold that can help tell when food goes bad.
Silk is one of the most versatile materials in the world. Spiders are usually associated with this useful substance, for they have evolved over millions and millions of years to develop silks that can be used by people. Even in nature, silk is important, for it acts as a natural glue. There has been talk for years that spider silk could be used to make cables stronger and more flexible than steel, or that it could be used to make bulletproof vests that are more effective than the current ones of Kevlar. However, the biggest problem that is faced by scientists is the fact that spiders do not generate enough silk. Also, spiders live alone, and they require a diet of other insects; sometimes they can be cannibals, meaning that they eat other spiders. As a result of this, scientists can not gather a group of spiders and mass produce their silk.
A way that researchers are working to solve this problem is that they are trying to unlock the secrets of spider silk, so that scientists could reinvent it in a laboratory. However, the artificial silk that they have created is not as strong, elastic, and other qualities of the real thing.
David Kaplan and other researchers at Tufts University work with silkworms to try and reinvent silkworm silk, because of the fact that they are vegetarians, unlike spiders. However, silkworms also have their drawbacks: they only have one kind of spinneret, whereas spiders have a whole set of spinnerets, allowing it to produce many different silk fibers. The main aspect of natural silk that scientists can't seem to produce, is that the silk is in a liquid form while it is inside a spider or something of the sort, and then comes out as a solid silk.
The process of making silk into useful things in life, such as transparent films, is "green," meaning that it is water based and that it only requires low temperatures to regulate. “Silk is a wonderful material because it’s biocompatible,” said Dr. Kharlampieva, who is continuing her research at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. “The main drawback is it’s soft. If you want to use it for optical applications, you need to reinforce it.”
Source:
Fountain, Henry. "The Reinvention of Silk." The New York Times. The New York
Times, 7 Mar. 2011. Web. 7 Mar. 2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/science/
08silk.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=science&adxnnlx=1299558239-0DSwQnNbU6c
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This is great. A few things i noticed were that maybe you should right a little more information about what they have acheived so far in the end of your blog rather than ending with new information.
ReplyDeleteNice article. However, you could go on to explain how the scientists are trying to make silk, like what is the artificial silk made of. Overall, nice article.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting blog post. I have always been fascinated by spider silk and its unique properties and strength. Overall, your post is clearly written with good explanations and summaries of the different problems scientists are facing in their experiments. However, I thought you could explain a little more on the scientists' current approaches in their experiments, and how they are able to turn the silk into fibers stronger than steel, or to make bulletproof vests. Also, I thought you could explain more about the properties of spider silk, and the different types a spider can make. Great post!
ReplyDelete