I Grew Real Spider Silk Using Yeast

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What started as a dream more than 10 years ago, has finally become reality. After more than 2 years of work, dozen of failures, hundreds of hours of lab work and design time, we've finally done it. We've engineered a strain of yeast that produce real spider silk! This video explains how.

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[N]

No wonder Tony Stark looked so impressed when Peter said he manufactured his webbing all by himself.

[davieuacho]

Me, not understanding anything but still enjoying it none the less: "Ah, shit, they can't print repetitive sequences, what a bummer dude"

[no_name]

mad scientists in movies: I will take over the world

mad scientists in real life: I will make beer out of spiders

[zebbofrags]

Sad to see this experiment hasn’t been taken any further in 3 years. This genuinely made me feel interested in science for the first time in my short 20 year life.

[jacob]

Dude, I cant believe you're making this technology open source. I've been reading about the possibilities of harnessing spider silk since I was a dork in middle school, and remember thinking the guys making the spider goats were cool as hell. I really hope you manage to extract and polymerize silk from this.

[crackedemerald]

*shakes yeast vigorously*
"they're a bit of a diva ngl"

[joelswartzentruber]

Instead of wet spinning, try electrospinning. It should give you aligned fibers instead of randomly oriented ones from wet spinning. You should be able to cut a section and twist the web fibers into actual thread that are theoretically aligned so you get better load sharing on each fiber.

[cg]

me laying in bed eating cheetos: ah yes of course biomineralization peptides

[lukasd.]

"I've become quite competent at designing dna from scratch"

Why does this sound so menacing.
But dude, youre awesome

[MagnusDangerMagnus]

30:15 I love that I live in the future. The idea that I share the world with a YouTube-vectored, open-source, melt-printable, github-published bio-kevlar makes me happier as an adult than ice-cream did as a child. Thank you.

[VirtualGobllim]

"It's [spiders] silk gene wasn't protected by any patents" you guys realize as well how nightmarish is this sentence?

[jadegreenleaf]

Arachnologists for decades: "If only we could produce spider silk"

Thought Emporium: "hold my spider beer."

[Shotgun_Gospel]

Guy who invented penicillin: "Patent? That's absurd. You wouldn't patent the sun, would you?"

Biotech firms: "Spider silk? Oh that was us, we invented that. Ours".

[JoelCreates]

I'll be following the development closely since, you know, I'm something of a scientist myself...

[sparking]

I have absolutely zero biochemistry background, but I somehow feel like I understood most of what you explained in this here video. Amazing work, and as a Spider-Man fan, I'm eager to know more about the possibilities of IRL webshooters

[ElderSign]

it's insane that this is even possible. i feel like a caveman listening to this

[Nighthawkinlight]

Instant thumbs up. Been waiting for this one.

[tatianatub]

"the plasmid has been shared on my github repo for that want to mess around with it"

imagine saying that sentence to someone in genetic engineering 25 years ago

[regulargreg]

I had a professor in college. This is the kind of project he was barking about in his often encouraged tangents during biopolymer class. Your project is like a customized and detailed exploration that goes well beyond what he could elaborate on in class. Thank you for peaking my interest!

[AppliedScience]

Wow, what an incredible project! Your dedication and perseverance is an inspiration!