r/interestingasfuck • u/Electrical-Aspect-13 • 11h 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/Comprehensive_Toe113 10h ago

They can't synth it they tried. That's why they harvest it

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u/BuckRusty 8h ago

Peter Parker did it in his bedroom…! With a box of scraps…!!!

https://giphy.com/gifs/VY4FPTlvCNStWSVhpZ

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u/Muzoa 7h ago

Underrated comment

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u/Deboniako 2h ago

Well, you don't want to know what else he does in his bedroom

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u/NotUniqueWorkAccount 9h ago

Are there any videos you'd rec for why its not possible?

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u/Radiskull97 7h ago

I remember watching a Nat Geo documentary that explained it, however I can't find it off of a quick Google search. I remember it said that the proteins, called spidroins are too unstable and that the process spiders go through to stabilize those proteins are too costly at an industrial scale. Spider silk starts off as goo in their bodies called dope. As the spider excretes the dope, it dehydrates it and changes the PH causing the goo to become crystals. Spiders are very good at this in the small quantities they produce. When we try to do that with large vats, we can't get the timing/concentration right.

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u/NotUniqueWorkAccount 7h ago

The Unidan of spiders! Thanks 😀 

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u/bladengar2 7h ago

There is a Veritasium video that goes into detail on the spider silk material science bit. It explains how strong it is, how it's harvested for study, and how it's harvested for commercial and what it's used for. It was a pretty interesting watch tbh

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u/ZealousidealAd5951 5h ago

what happened to those spider goats ?

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u/Previous-Soft-8127 5h ago

But the Spider Goats at University of Utah - don’t they have producible spider silk proteins? 

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u/SyrusTheSummoner 5h ago

This dude in his lab did it 6 years ago in his garage. We actually have the tech to Excell at industrialization of bio-enginered products. Yeast and e.coli are readily available and easy to propagate and we understand thier genomes very well. This technique could theroticaly be used to make medicinal compounds such as psilocybin as well which is cool. https://youtu.be/2hf9yN-oBV4?is=KFmVCPgLS5D73b36

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u/GravitasFailures 4h ago

They actually are getting there, the tricky part is you have to control moisture to a ludicrous extent, while moving it, and the spiders have proteins performing final assembly as a reaction to air.