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The resulting 11-foot by 4-foot textile is the onlylarge piece of cloth made from natural spider silkexisting in the world today. "Spider silk is very elastic,and it has a tensile strength that is incredibly strong compared tosteel or Kevlar," said textile expert Simon Peers, who co-led theproject.
Also, can clothes be made from spider silk?
But unlike silkworm silk, which silkworms produceto make their cocoons (the stuff used for diaphanous dressesand smart neckties), spider silk can't be farmed in largequantities because spiders are cannibals, and willeat one another in close quarters. Bolt Threads doesn't usespiders to make its silk.
In this way, can you make spider silk?
Shah and his team are far from the only scientists towork on creating artificial spider silk. A German team hasmodified E-coli bacteria to produce spider silk molecules.Scientists at Utah State University bred genetically modified“spider goats” to produce silk proteinsin their milk.
Quantitatively, spider silk is five timesstronger than steel of the same diameter. It has beensuggested that a Boeing 747 could be stopped in flight by a singlepencil-width strand and spider silk is almost as strong asKevlar, the toughest man-made polymer.