Strong and light, spider silk is one of the most impressive materials in the natural world. Now, scientists in Germany and Switzerland have found a new use for spider silk – wrapping up cancer drugs to protect them until they can reach their tumorous targets.
Continue Reading
Spider silk has long held the title of strongest natural biomaterial. Now, researchers at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology have developed a new biomaterial out of wood nanofibers that steals the strength record.
Continue Reading
Spider silk is among the strongest known materials. While some researchers are pursuing synthetic spider silk, scientists at MIT have taken another approach … they've devised a method of using silkworm silk to produce fibers that are almost as stiff as spider silk.
Continue Reading
The ultra-fine nature of spider silk has provided inspiration for scientists developing sensitive new types of microphones. Further down the track, these new devices could be put to use in advanced hearing aids and phones that pick up sounds at much lower frequencies.
Continue Reading
Natural spider silk is already amazingly strong stuff, plus scientists have developed synthetic versions of the material. Now, however, researchers have split the difference – they've created silk that comes from spiders, but that has added man-made ingredients which give it extra strength.
Continue Reading
So far as nature's wonder materials go, spider silk is right up there. Now scientists have uncovered another exciting application for it, using it to bridge the gap between severed nerves that would otherwise struggle to be repaired.
Continue Reading
Chronic middle ear disease can lead to infection, pain, hearing loss and perforated eardrums, and may take several rounds of surgery to address the problems. Now an Australian team of researchers has developed the ClearDrum, a silk implant that can repair a damaged eardrum with just one procedure.
Continue Reading
The American brown recluse spider is already known for being one of the most venomous arachnids on the planet. It turns out, however, that the spider also has very strong silk. Scientists have recently discovered the secret of that strength, and believe that it could have practical applications.
Continue Reading
Silk may be strong, elastic and biodegradable, but unfortunately it's also expensive. With that in mind, scientists recently set out to produce lower-cost artificial silk. They've already succeeded in producing small quantities, using whey protein.
Continue Reading
Lightweight and extremely strong, spider silk is ideal for use in many applications. Unfortunately, large numbers of spiders are hard to handle and produce very little silk individually. Now researchers have created a prototype process to spin silk thread grown by bacteria on a large scale.
Continue Reading
See the stories that matter in your inbox every morning