Spider silk uses continue to grow
USU researchers may not have a sixth-sense like Spider-Man, but they still spin webs that can save lives.
With a team of five graduate and 12 undergraduate students, Randy Lewis, a professor working with Utah Science Technology and Research, is pioneering methods of producing artificial spider silk.
“The reason people are interested in spider silk is that it’s stronger than Kevlar and stretchier than nylon,” Lewis said. “No man-made material has both of those attributes.”
Because of its strength and flexibility, Lewis said he and his team have discovered the silk can be used for a wide variety of things.
“Because of spider silk’s thinness, it can be used for medical applications such as stitches, artificial ligaments and artificial tendons,” Lewis said.
The silk can also be used to improve military supplies. It can be made into helmets that protect soldiers from very fine bomb fragments that get under the skin and cause infection. The silk could also be used in parachutes, ropes and body armor, Lewis said.
The silk has civilian applications as well. It can be used for airbags, bicycle tires and to help reduce blunt force trauma in helmets, as well as fabrics for everyday clothing, Lewis said.
“There’s really a huge variety of things,” he said. “I certainly can’t tell you which one will be the first to get to market.”
When the project first got funding in 1988, researchers soon discovered that it was virtually impossible to farm spiders because they are very territorial and cannibalistic, and they need their space. Even if it were possible to farm spiders, researchers couldn’t collect the webs, Lewis said.
Instead, the researchers discovered a way to clone a silk protein.
“Once we had the genes, we knew the code for how to make the basic material,” Lewis said. “That was a complete discovery because at that time no one had ever cloned a spider gene.”
Soon the researchers had cloned genes from the spider silk protein. From there, it was just a question of how to put the information into an organism that could make a large quantity of the protein, he said. The team immediately thought of bacteria.
The bacteria did produce silk, just not very much, Lewis said. The researchers turned to silkworms.
“We’ve thought of putting (the silk protein) in silkworms for a very long period of time,” Lewis said. “What happens with silkworms is they combine it with their silk to make their cocoons. We call that a composite cocoon.”
Lewis said he and his team were introduced to an unexpected but effective animal to produce the silk: goats.
“A company came to us and their expertise was putting genes into goats and making sure the genes that make that protein showed up in the milk and only the milk,” Lewis said.
Cameron Copeland, a Ph.D. student studying biological engineering and a researcher on the project, said the project is a positive thing for society and the university.
“(Spider silk) is a game changer,” he said. “It’s biologically derived so we don’t have to worry so much about natural resources.”
Copeland said the silk is revolutionary.
“It’s stronger than anything we know of naturally and it’s so extendable,” Copeland said.
David Clark, the director of business development in USU’s Commercial Enterprises department, helps the team find corporate partners to move the research forward. Clark said the project is a positive mark on the university.
Since the project started the team has discovered new developments, such as how to produce more silk proteins and how to spin spider silk fibers into thread.
“When you create fibers with those proteins, they’re very very thin. There have been some really terrific innovations in order to get those really thin fibers into thread,” Clark said.
Clark said he believes spider silk developments will be on the market within the decade.
“I think it’s going to take a little time,” Clark said. “It won’t be in the next year or two. There’s still a lot of work to do, but it’s coming.”
– katelinch@gmail.com