Interesting...

I heard about the 'transgenic goat milk' for spider silk, but thought they had not gone much further with it... are they really able to make commercial quantities or just enough for research?

The article talks about metals concentrated in specific insect body parts (jaws) - this is the kind of thing you find in the insect kiindom that is pretty amazing. We all have 'sequestration' processes for metals, but trust the insects to actually use that to advantage. So the metal goes to strengthen their jaws. They do other smart sequestration stuff too, like taking bad-tasting or poisonous stuff from plants and making themselves unfit to eat...

I wonder if there's a genetic process for metal sequestration that would save the trouble of 'atomic layer deposition'. That's probably what they're looking for next.

We have these big spiders here that build deluxe webs in doorways at a certain time of year. No doubt you've seen the Larson cartoon of spiders on a slide (If we pull this off we'll eat like kings). I personally think spiders could be effectively farmed, if you built the right habitat (doorways...or just small trees tall enough they can build at regulation height - that's face height, for any of you who've never been in spider-infested woods ).

i wonder what applictions could use this

They are just trying to do what spiderman knew how to do!

They use spider silk for cross hairs in a rifle scope.

If you make a cable one inch in diameter from blackwidow spider web it is strong enough to lift 74,000lbs.

So a cable made from the material and made to be three times stronger means you can create a smaller cable and have more of it on a spool. So you can reduce the bulk.

There's other applications such as reinforcing concrete might be an option.

Reinforcing glass might be another.

Making harnesses and nets for safety.

I'm surprised there isn't a market for making clothes from spider web silk. We get it from caterpillars, why not spiders?

Good post, Roger.

I hadn't before heard of ALD, but found a link that might be of interest to some.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_layer_deposition

I'm not sure I know more after reading than before , but it is interesting.

[I'm just glad it's not a natural process or spiders might evolve and we'd all be in big trouble .]

Lots of interesting possibilities here from thread applications, to woven applications that might work similarly to woven carbon fiber, Kevlar(TM), etc.

Cool

Kind regards ...

Reminds me of the time (many years ago) that a Textiles (now Material Science and Engineering) grad student came to me to design and fabricate a "Writing" spider silk take-up spool so that they could collect it to measure the tension and torsion modulus as well as its dielectric properties.

One project led to another to design and fabricate a single fiber torsion modulus test machine, which I accomplished by the use of home-built (so to speak) air bearings, two incremental encoder discs and associated electronics, etc., and a variable crank to provide sinusoidal twist. Turned out that it worked like a charm.

I remember getting a report from them telling me about the properties they measured, but I've been senile too long to recall anything more than it was found to be stronger than steel.

What I want to know is, who harvests spider web silk and is there much money involved?

You never hear about the millionaire spiderweb tycoon.