Spider Silk Finally Ready For Commercialization

An anonymous reader writes: We've been hearing about little bits of progress for decades, but spider silk fibers are finally ready to be delivered at commercial scale, thanks to three scientist-founders and large investments ($40M) from SF and SV venture capitalists. Who'll be the first to build a web slinger?

Re:

[SpankiMonki]

I'm 12 and what is this

If you're 12, this is a real opportunity for you to shoot webs from the wrists of your Spider Man costume.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 50. I can't wait to shoot webs from the wrists of my Spider Man costume.

Re:Wait a minute, what happened to the goat?

[Culture20]

All the spider goat samples went udderly baaaad.

Not spider thread. Yeast string.

[Punko]

These folks have come up with an idea to market a threat with some (but not all) the properties of spider silk. Using yeast. While I am more than willing to admit that this material sounds interesting, it is most certainly not spider silk.

But it's not the first time we've seen an utterly misleading headline in both the article and in the Slashdot post.

Re:

[SpankiMonki]

These folks have come up with an idea to market a threat with some (but not all) the properties of spider silk. Using yeast. While I am more than willing to admit that this material sounds interesting, it is most certainly not spider silk. But it's not the first time we've seen an utterly misleading headline in both the article and in the Slashdot post.

TFA [bloomberg.com] states "The company has developed a synthetic alternative to spider silk by engineering proteins identical to the natural threads stretched across the nooks in your basement."

Care to list the properties that the natural silk has that the synthetic silk doesn't?

Re:Not spider thread. Yeast string.

[random coward]

Structure; Natural silk owes most of its properties to the structure the proteins are woven into at nano-scale. They've synthesized the proteins in the lab before, but that is a long way from synthesizing the silk.

Re:Not spider thread. Yeast string.

[random coward]

Reading is fundamental. Re-read what I wrote.
Or I guess I'll bring it down to your level. Hair is made from keratin. So are finger nails. If I engineer a yeast to produce keratin, will it be hair, fingernails, or neither that the yeas produces? But the protein is the same.

Re:

[SpankiMonki]

If I'm ignorant about something, I'm not afraid to ask questions. If I'm wrong about something, I am more than happy to admit it. Sorry you confuse that with stupidity.

Re:

[random coward]

You didn't politely ask. You were dishonest. You put words in my mouth:

" What makes you think they are not?"

I did not say nor think that they had not created the protein. I answered the question in the post above.

You're still telling lies saying your question was honest and polite. Don't be an asshole and then call me a dick, when I treat your dishonesty and rudeness as they deserve.

Re:Not spider thread. Yeast string.

[SpankiMonki]

I wonder where I could've gotten the idea that lab in question had created actual spider silk and not just it's protein building blocks? Oh yeah, it's in the title of the article and the TFA's headline.

Spider Silk Finally Ready For Commercialization
A Bay Area Startup Spins Lab-Grown Silk

All I did was honestly ask for some clarification, and the AC who responded to that request [slashdot.org] wrote a clear explanation that clarified the matter for me. I wasn't trying to be dishonest, and I certainly wasn't trying to put words into your mouth.

Your reply, on the other hand, began with a patronizing insult:

Reading is fundamental. Re-read what I wrote. Or I guess I'll bring it down to your level.

If you would have left those first three sentences out of you post, I would have considered that a polite reply and I would have understood the differences you originally pointed out. But you didn't leave them out and unfortunately, I felt insulted and responded to you in kind. That was my bad, and I apologize.

Re:

[SpankiMonki]

BTW, if you will re-read the quote from TFA:

"The company has developed a synthetic alternative to spider silk by engineering proteins identical to the natural threads stretched across the nooks in your basement."

I read this as saying the lab has re-created the actual silk, not just the protein building blocks.

I don't know anything about spider silk or molecular biology - that's why I asked. Given the quote from TFA, I don't think asking the question again is unreasonable - much less dishonest or rude.

Re: Not spider thread. Yeast string.

[Anonymous Coward]

The individual proteins are like Lego blocks. You can make them in mass easily. The problem is how do you stack them together. One way makes a chain with strength and/or elasticity. Another way makes kinks and loses much of the characteristics. The silk-in-goats researchers and others have made the blocks before, but haven't gotten them put together right. But they are focused on artificial tendons and bulletproof vests. The spinnerette on a spider puts the blocks together correctly as it extrudes the fil

Re:

[hummassa]

The spinnerette on a spider puts the blocks together correctly as it extrudes the filament. A fermentation vat can't / won't.

Apparently, the article has a photo of a synthetic spinneret-like thingy that does that now.

Re:

[Jim Sadler]

Actually modifying the genes of female sheep causes the females to make the proteins in their udders. Milking the goats and separating the proteins allows them to be made into spider silk. We may be seeing some great fishing line and shoe laces might be pretty darned strong soon.

Re:

[FatdogHaiku]

Care to list the properties that the natural silk has that the synthetic silk doesn't?

That "New Spider" smell?

Re:

[Punko]

1) The yeast can make the same proteins. However, what makes spider silk's properties so amazing is what the spider does with them inside/with its spinnerets. simply making the building blocks of the silk does not give you spider silk. The chemical work has been done before in a lab.

2. My comment was that this material was made to be aritificial spider silk. Both the article and the summary headline read "spider silk". Even if this material was 100% exactly the same as natural silk,it would not be s

Revised Song

[SuperKendall]

Spider Man, Spider Man.

Discovers silk can't hold a grown Man.

Look out! There falls the Spider Man!

Re:

[tmosley]

The original Spider Man didn't shoot silk but some artificial polymer that he created. Guess Stan Lee was an early adopter of calculators.

spider silk is strong

[goombah99]

Spider silk in equivalent quantities has tensile strenght above mild steel and it's tougher than kelvlar. (yes toughness is actually a real quantiative metric if a bad choice of words).

Re:

[mordjah]

the interwebz?

Vaporware

[Verdatum]

Raising 40m is fine and all, but something tells me I'm not gonna be able to purchase a spool of this stuff in 2016 like the article boasts. That's just something you say to get media coverage and further investors.

"expects to have products by late next year."

[Nutria]

IOW, vaporware.

Re:"expects to have products by late next year."

[ShanghaiBill]

IOW, vaporware.

Here is the relevant translation chart [xkcd.com].

Who else thought this would be about...

[tlambert]

Who else thought this would be about foreign spiders getting H1-B's, and taking jobs from American spiders?

Already Achieved

[impossiblefork]

To my knowledge this has already been achieved. Specifically, a Japanese company called Spiber spin synthetic spider silk manufactured by this kind of process. They've made enough to weave a dress out of it as a demonstration and have some kind of project to build a factory, which should produce some hundred kilograms per year of it sometime during 2015. However, their website isn't full of updates and much of the material is in Japanese.

There's also a Swedish biomedicine company called Spiber Technologies that makes this kind of stuff to grow cells on. Reading wikipedia also gives a couple of examples [wikipedia.org]

Still, if they achieve really large scale production that may be nice even if they aren't first. The focus on textile applications might also be indicative of being able to make large amounts of fiber.

Just in time...

[grouchomarxist]

For spider silk has been displaced as the worlds strongest material by limpet teeth: http://www.iflscience.com/plan... [iflscience.com]

Re:

[ChrisMaple]

That limpet is mine!