Is Spider Silk the Future of Material Engineering?

Spiders have a long and fabled history of being a notorious creepy-crawly, but their silk might just change that image. Here are six ways in which spider silk is being studied to improve life for human beings.

Hosted by: Hank Green

----------
----------
Huge thanks go to the following Patreon supporters for helping us keep SciShow free for everyone forever:

Matt Curls, Alisa Sherbow, Dr. Melvin Sanicas, Harrison Mills, Adam Brainard, Chris Peters, charles george, Piya Shedden, Alex Hackman, Christopher R Boucher, Jeffrey Mckishen, Ash, Silas Emrys, Eric Jensen, Kevin Bealer, Jason A Saslow, Tom Mosner, Tomás Lagos González, Jacob, Christoph Schwanke, Sam Lutfi, Bryan Cloer

----------
Looking for SciShow elsewhere on the internet?
#SciShow
----------
Sources:

Adhesion

Insecticides

Conduction

Dragline Strength

Alternative Plastic

Biological imaging

Robotic muscle

Image Sources:

[coryshannon]

There's a YouTuber named "the thought emporium" with a background in genetic engineering that genetically engineered yeast to produce spider silk! He showed the whole process, and documentation. And an earlier group developed goats that produced the silk from their mammary glands which turned out to be somewhat impractical for mass production. The "spider beer" has some real mass production potential as yeast reproduce rapidly.

[trevor]

Imagine a t shirt that is completely environmentally friendly, super rip resistant, bullet proof, and insect repellent.

[tatuvarvemaa]

Spider webs on their own are actually the best at picking up audio. A spider sitting in the middle of their web is actually listening to their environment with their body hairs, and the shape of the web is actually 100% loss free when it comes to audio and can detect it from incredably long distances.
As if spiders needed more super powers involving their web.
Edit: Its Kyle Hill, ”spidey sense is real” I believe.

[sclair]

Have we considered the possibility spiders might be too small? If we geneticly engineer some of the more social spiders to be the size of sheep we should be able to produce massive quantities of large high quality silk... What? Why are you looking at me like that?

[oliverhernandez]

I hope biotech and genetic editing are fully embraced by everyone so that we can all benefit from this and other possible advancements sooner rather than later

[fdulcia]

When I was at the university I had to do a presentation about spider silk, and I have to say I missed some information in this video. Like how spider silk is already used to make sport shoes because it's antibacterial and won't start to stink. Also how it has already been used in history on wounds or how it could change future medicine in terms of prevention for example breastinplants from inflammation or to use spider silk in compressed form as surgical screws, so that they don't have to open the person again to get the screws back out. Well my presentation took like 40 minutes. 😅 I am so interested in these topic.

[samthelima]

There's actually a company that is very close to commercializing spider silk from genetically modified silk worms, utilizing spider DNA to create incredibly strong silk that can be produced and harvested using typical silk production processes. Kraig Biocraft Laboratories started at the University of Notre Dame, now has offices in Michigan, and has a production facility in Vietnam that is ramping up to full production.

[biomanhazard]

This kinda reminds me of an old fable from my tribe, about an 8 armed woman who spun webs for her family and her warrior tribe. Arrows bounced from from the armor she made, it's crazy to see that now becoming a thing

[timsullivan]

I suspect my room-mate also has hygroscopic properties - he effortlessly absorbs every liquid in my liquor cabinet...

[bitwisedevs]

I always cherish my childhood as we used to catch and pet orb weaver spider, there is a dedicated months/season in our town where a tournament sort of is being held. As a child I always wonder how each spider differs and the way they produce silk. Good to see that they are now getting more recognition of how awesome these species truly are.

[AnansitheSpider]

I've often wondered why Spider-Man never makes his costumes out of spider silk.

[canisarcani]

ah yes, spider silk: the future of engineering! and has been for the past several decades, along with programmable metals, and carbon nano tubes (which tbf are finally starting to see actual real use in the construction and even defense industries).

[noway]

I remember when a lab genetically engineered goats to produce milk that included spider silk proteins.

They were producing a lot of the protein but the strength of spider silk comes from both its protein structure and the physical structure (the way that spiders physically weave it.). It's the same way hair and nails are mostly made of the same stuff but have different physical properties because they are physically structured differently.

Getting the precise mechanical weaving is probably going to be the tighter bottleneck than creating the protein strands.

[Evergreen]

"The ultimate tiny lab assistants" Anyone else get the image of a spider in a lab coat?

[Dsyphus]

id be curious to learn more about the "spider goats" how they produce the protein for spider silk in their milk. is that a viable way to mass produce the silk or are the spider goats, just a neat example of dna manipulation.

[IamTheHolypumpkin]

Sticking a label on a, wet surface at -196°C is a, lifelong dream of mine 😁

[tbella]

Aside from the amazing, and downright inspiring uses of spidersilk, PizzaJohn on your abdomen makes me smile.

Thank you Hank, see you on Friday.

[planetarthropoda]

Just another reason to love our spider bros. <3

[MeterLP]

Wouldnt using moisture-level to control spider silk robot muscles result in slow and imprecise movement? And having to control the moisture level precisely seems impractical to me.

[njdinostar]

The microscope shown at 8:03 does not work by focusing light at all! This is an atomic force microscope and works by scanning a tiny needle across a surface and measuring the topography at a nano scale. This type of microscope, used by the authors credited on screen, does indeed achieve a much higher resolution than optical microscopes, and is used by microbial biologists (and many other fields), however it would NOT benefit from better lenses, because it does not use lenses or light to image.
(Yes, there are a few lenses in this machine too, but they are used to guide the laser to measure the deflection, but a higher resolution or quality in these lenses would not affect the resolution of the microscope.)