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Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Spider Silks:  Intelligent Materials - of the Future?

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/material … html]Click

*Eeeeek.  Don't like spiders.    Do not.  But is an interesting article.  Cool pic, though, of the silk spigots. 

They're looking into all sorts of applications for spider silks.  However: 

Spiders are territorial and cannibalistic and so impossible to farm.

  Hmmmm...guess we evolved from spiders, not monkeys.  Sounds about right.

Says there's 34,000 described species of spiders.  :-\  (I read somewhere the other day that every human is only 3 feet away from a spider at any given time).

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

Cobra Commander

Member

From: The outskirts of Detroit.

Registered: 2002-04-09

Posts: 3,039

Re: Spider Silks:  Intelligent Materials - of the Future?

Quote 
Spiders are territorial and cannibalistic and so impossible to farm.

So perhaps we could get enough silk if we could engineer either cooperative spiders or really big ones. 

Well, maybe not.

Interesting that recently some progress has been made via genetic engineering to produce silk proteins, maybe some useful results will follow in the next decade or so. There seems to be a great deal of potential.

(I read somewhere the other day that every human is only 3 feet away from a spider at any given time).

Found mine. 

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Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Euler

Member

From: Corvallis, OR

Registered: 2003-02-06

Posts: 922

Re: Spider Silks:  Intelligent Materials - of the Future?

Some researchers have produced genetically engineered goats that produce spider silk dissolved in their milk.  That seems to be an easier method of production than trying to farm spiders.

Cobra Commander

Member

From: The outskirts of Detroit.

Registered: 2002-04-09

Posts: 3,039

Re: Spider Silks:  Intelligent Materials - of the Future?

Some researchers have produced genetically engineered goats that produce spider silk dissolved in their milk.

Yes, that's one of the developments I was referring to. An early step, but encouraging.

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Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.

GCNRevenger

Member

From: Earth

Registered: 2003-10-14

Posts: 6,056

Re: Spider Silks:  Intelligent Materials - of the Future?

Functionalized and perhaps mildly crosslinked anisotropic SWCNT composits will even blow away spider silk though. I also wonder if spider silk has much resistance to radiation, since its a biopolymer.

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[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]

[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]

Euler

Member

From: Corvallis, OR

Registered: 2003-02-06

Posts: 922

Re: Spider Silks:  Intelligent Materials - of the Future?

Functionalized and perhaps mildly crosslinked anisotropic SWCNT composits will even blow away spider silk though.

SWCNTs are stronger than spider silk, but the spider silk still has advantages in many applications.  With it's biodegradable properties, spider silk has a lot of promise for medical applications.  It also seems to be more elastic than SWCNTs.