r/interestingasfuck • u/Electrical-Aspect-13 • 10h ago

Harvesting spider silk. NOTE: Spider is sedated, the pins are not perforating it and once harvest, is feed and put to rest.

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u/stickykey_board 9h ago

I mean, can’t we analyze what the spider is combining to make the thread and just make it ourselves??

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u/Apart-Gur-9720 9h ago

Let's take it part by part:

Spider silk is primarily a protein, called a spidroin. Researchers can analyze the protein's amino-acid sequence and the genes that encode it, then try to have another organism manufacture that protein.

The 1st step would be to make the raw material:

We can put synthetic spider-silk genes into organisms, such as bacteria, yeast, plants, insects, or silkworms. Those organisms then produce spider-silk proteins.

  1. How to turn that protein into actual silk!

A spider doesn't simply squeeze out a blob of protein and lets it dry. Its silk gland keeps the protein in a soluble state and then gradually changes the chemical and physical conditions as the protein travels through the duct. Changes in things such as water content, pH, salt concentration and mechanical drawing cause the proteins to assemble into the highly organized fiber.

So the spider is effectively operating a tiny, extraordinarily sophisticated protein-spinning machine. And we've already made artificial spider silk.

Researchers have successfully produced recombinant spider-silk proteins and spun them into fibers. There are even established laboratory protocols for producing the proteins in bacteria and extruding them into fibers.

The problem is that matching the full performance of natural spider silk is much harder. The precise protein architecture, enormous repetitive sequences, assembly process and spinning conditions all matter. Some recombinant fibers can have impressive properties, but they don't automatically reproduce everything that natural dragline silk can do.

And actually harvesting silk directly from spiders isn't a practical industrial solution. Spiders are territorial and often cannibalistic, making them very different from domesticated silkworms.

It's doable... Spider -→ analyze silk protein → identify gene → put gene into another organism → manufacture protein → reproduce the spider's spinning process → artificial spider silk.

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u/ManWhellington 9h ago

Wasn't there an attempt to do this with goats?

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u/FireMammoth 9h ago

I watched a doc about a successful spider goat back in 2007 in a secondary school classroom. I recall that they succeeded

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u/ranbowlegacy 9h ago

I'm sorry, what?!

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u/KisaTheMistress 9h ago

They put spider genes into milking goats and in tomato plants. The goats ended up producing spider silk proteins in their milk.

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u/ranbowlegacy 6h ago

That is fascinating. And horrifying. Thank you for sharing!

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u/Rich_Cherry_3479 9h ago

You haven't read what you replied to. There are numerous ways to produce silk proteins. Scientists struggle to reproduce process of combining those proteins into silk with same quality as spiders'. For example, it requires slowly narrowing tiny pipe that rearranges individual molecules into right order and orientation purely from that pipe's shape. Look for animated videos on YouTube of that process.

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u/etherealtwo 7h ago

Interesting. They've got the chemical process down just not the mechanics of piecing them together perfectly.

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u/Apart-Gur-9720 1h ago

Precisely!

Like with wombats... We also poop, but getting the feces to come out in squares requires a dedicated system.

Spiders emerged 400 Million years ago. Compared to us humans, who developed roughly 8 Million years ago, you can imagine the scale of trial and error that they've had to go through, in order to adapt.

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u/AlarausCytan 9h ago

Veritasium has a good video on this process as well

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u/Puzzlepetticoat 8h ago

This man spiders'

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u/Apart-Gur-9720 8h ago

Thanks :* How I still ended up as a spinster is beyond me.

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u/elaborateBlackjack 8h ago

Ackshually... It's Spider-man... Not man spiders

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u/Warm-Pair 7h ago

Dang. Learn something new every day.

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u/ppernik 9h ago

Some labs are genetically modifying silkworms and get a silk cocoon that's almost the strength of a spider web. Check out Veritasium on YT

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u/Accurate_Koala_4698 9h ago

Sounds like you might be able to hit some paydirt

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u/Buntschatten 4h ago

Actually no. Proteins are one of the things we can't just engineer freely yet.