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Your doctor could soon be sewing you up with spider silk after successful new study
Scientists have created an artificial spider silk to stitch and heal wounds that could one day become a standard practice in the medical field.
It’s estimated that up to 15% of the population is afraid of spiders, and yet, the creepy critters are perhaps one of the most interesting species on the planet. They are capable of weaving enormous webs, devouring their own mates, and their silk is widely regarded as one of the strongest materials on Planet Earth.
They spun their own spider silk because it was more practical
Because most are relatively small, except for the record-breaking Hercules that is, it’s easy to forget that arachnids are top predators in their own right. They are incredibly territorial and are known to cannibalize one another, which is precisely why Bingbing Gao and colleagues decided to create their own during recent medical research.
Though earlier methods called for teaching microbes to produce spider silk proteins through genetic engineering, the technique proved challenging because the proteins had a habit of sticking together. Instead, Bingbing Gao’s team sought to modify the natural protein sequence to design an easily spinnable and stable spider silk using microbes.
To add more structure to their creations, they added extra peptides to increase the silk’s yield and prevent the proteins from sticking together. Thanks to the power of technology, the researchers were then able to spin their silk using hollow needles attached to a 3D printer. It was basically a mechanical spider, weaving individual threads together to make bigger ropes of silk.
Once created, the artificial spider silk was then placed inside a prototype wound dressing that was applied to mice with osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease, and chronic wounds caused by diabetes.
Drug treatments were easily added to the bandages and the researchers soon found that wounds healed significantly better than those with traditional dressings. Not only do the bandages perform better than traditional ones, but they are also eco-friendly and biodegradable.
Their findings so far were published in the ACS Nano Journal.
The applications of spider silk are crazy
Spider silk has been used for thousands of years for a number of purposes. In Ancient Greece, cobwebs were used to stop wounds from bleeding, and to Aboriginal Australians, spider silk was a vital component of their fishing equipment.
In modern times, spider silk could be used in any situation where you are looking for durability above all else. Applications could include bulletproof clothing, artificial tendons or ligaments, wear-resistant lightweight clothing, and even rust-free panels on vehicles.
So next time you put that house spider outside, essentially killing it, just think about its silk and all the wonderful things it can do.
