Why Can't We Make Spider Silk?
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- Опубліковано 14 чер 2024
- People have been using silkworm silk to make stuff for thousands of years, but spider silk could potentially be even more useful. It's stronger than steel, super stretchy, and could be made into anything from bridge cables to biodegradable water bottles... if only we could figure out how to cultivate it.
Hosted by: Hank Green
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Sources:
www.wired.com/2015/06/bolt-th...
finance.yahoo.com/news/314-ne...
www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldm...
www.smithsonianmag.com/innova...
www.kraiglabs.com/spider-silk/
www.technologyreview.com/s/54...
www.technologyreview.com/s/42...
www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/21685308
cen.acs.org/articles/92/i9/Sp...
www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3...
texeresilk.com/article/silk_m...
phys.org/news/2018-07-genetic...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
www.britannica.com/animal/sil...
phys.org/news/2012-07-future-...
labiotech.eu/industrial/adida...
phys.org/news/2018-04-spider-...
www.wired.com/story/bolt-thre...
www.bbc.com/news/av/science-e...
EDIT 2020 Update: I've now grown actual spider silk. At time of writing, I'm about to grow 5 gallons of the stuff in the next couple days. Here's the update video ua-cam.com/video/2hf9yN-oBV4/v-deo.html
Couple of things. First the idea we don't know enough isn't really accurate and there are growing numbers of groups who've succesfully made silk on par with the natural varieties. It's pretty straight forward "make the proteins longer". Successful groups add linkers to the ends of the silk genes so that once the individual proteins are produced they stick together in a special way that makes the fibers much longer and stronger. Little bit of protein engineering goes a long way if you've got a fiber gene to work with. That said, silk is a weird protein that is very repetitive and who's gene sequence is GC rich. This makes it hard to isolate from spiders and transfer to a new organism.
So most people make their own DNA sequences that are easy to synthesize, who's protein, while having a lot of the same properties can be inferior for a variety of reasons. This is less of a limit of knowledge and more a limit of print capability. We're limited in the patterns the machine can handle. Our synthesis technology can't print this gene, so we have to massively simplify it and keep it short and repetitive to save on cost. But also even if you print the gene, super long proteins are hard to grow in ecoli at a scale that's useful. They literally get filled up like balloons and stop working, but also that repetitive nature drains the cells supplies of alanine and glycine. So yields are awful even if your fiber is amazing. Doesn't matter if it's better than the real thing if your organism produces miligrams per gallon of media. Hence the weird organism choices like goats.
TL:DR use natural silk genes if possible, add linkers to the end, pick a bigger organism than ecoli, then just use special solvents to dissolve and wet spin fibers. Tada you've got silk on par with the real thing if you choose all the right things. And there are some pretty decent guidelines on what to pick as lots of people have made silks of all sorts of varieties.
So it's not that we don't know enough per say. It's more that our technology has some weird and specific limits that makes this a hard problem to physically make happen in a lab. Even if you design a perfect fiber, actually moving the small volumes of liquid around in the right way and having the reactions and organism work as planned is the limiting agent as sometimes bio just wont play along. The spinnertte thing is largely irrelevant and there's half a dozen ways that all work just as well. It's a really weird biochemistry lab problem more than anything. I obviously had to glaze over some stuff, but that's the gist.
For those interested, I'm actually working on producing a yeast that produces spider silk and am documenting and explaining the whole process on my channel. Rather than synthesis I'm attempting to extract the genes from spiders so I can have a more natural fiber with less human/synthesis error in it:
ua-cam.com/video/Fx8TcGrCOSI/v-deo.html
The Thought Emporium I was literally thinking of your channel while watching this! Thanks for the info on the video btw!
why tf does this only have one reply and 4 likes, it's topical as hell
He actually did it from yeast today! Been following you from the beginning ! Congratulations ! Proud to be from Montreal
looking forward to seeing you spin your silk
Bro this man actual did it.
*"Spider dope."*
Ill take 5 please
Made for spiders, by spiders, from spiders.
These "scientists" just arent well connected. If they needed some dope from spider they could of just asked.
Oh great . Now the spiders are selling dope. Must be illegals.
For how many times Hank said 'dope' it could have been a scishow drugs episode.
SciShow 1 year ago: We can't make spider silk
Thought Emporium today: Hold my spider beer
He still has the same kind of problems to face, but yeah, kinda cool. Time will tell
Same here tusk
Same
I literally came back to this video for this🤣🤣🤣
@UberKrassMann Spider beer (or Spider draft as we joke about it) is accurate here since TTE is producing it through yeast, and currently has a tub of beer fermenting using that yeast. (Why? For the fun of it. Can be seen here: twitter.com/EmporiumThought/status/1315213684734660608)
"So, why'd the bridge collapse?"
"The spiders ate it."
Lol
Lmao
Nice pun😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹🇺🇸🇺🇸
@@saber5723 its not a pun though...
Obviously we simply need bigger spiders, like, massive elephant sized spiders.. nothing could possibly go wrong with those, so get on it science!
we can engineer giant bugs to feed to them, this is great
@@moosemaimer And we can strategically build our cities so that the spiders will form massive webs in them.
That was the theory in the movie Ice Spiders... didnt go so well
@@BlaineLP shhhh. But if we have bulletproof spider silk outfits what can possibly go wrong?
Just do the goat thing with elephants lol
CEO: "Peter Parker made this stuff, with school lab chemicals, in Queens, in a apartment!!"
Scientist:" I'm sorry sir, but I'm not Peter Parker."
I heard this before in iron man cool dialogue
@@omarbutt4867 yah
Why cant they gene splice the animals silk and insert it into a silkworm
Ahh, i see what you did there
@@quadeevans6484 they talked about it in the video. Spiders have specialized organs that process the silk proteins, and that's harder to transfer. There's a UA-cam channel where someone got yeast to produce a primitive form of spider silk called Thought Emporium, but the problem is that spiders produce multiple forms of silk depending on their needs. These varieties require a large genetic capacity, which requires large batches of DNA made of small and precise repeating sections of genetic code. Combine that with the supporting genetic code for other traits that make effective spider silk, and you end up with something that is specific to what a particular species can support.
EDIT: looks like that guy from the UA-cam channel I mentioned is in this comment section too. He's right below this comment if you scroll down a bit.
Thought emporium: *hold my yeast*
The chances of the UA-cam recommendation algorithm showing me this the same day as the Thought Emporium's video going up are pretty high. Also, hello to you, Mr. Man of Culture.
We need Spider-Man for this
Spider-Pig is also a viable option...hear he works cheap
OOOOOR @TheThoughtEmporium who is LITERALLY on his way to manufacturing spider silk... just a year after this video :)
im spiderman and i can make webs with my saliva
Since 2014 spider silk is mass produced and it is branded Biosteel
Or the thought emporium, who’s making spider silk right now
I've got plenty in the corner of my bedroom. If those scientists and engineers want it I think we can come to some sort of arrangement where they come by periodically and clea... I mean collect it.
Yeah, why don't they? Maybe they just have to invent some Vacuum Collector and instead of us buying new bags, they buy our filled bags.
Then make a tie out of it and sell it back for 1000x the money
Ha! Nice one 😂👌
I just let them do bug control, silly me
@@katiekane5247 Allowing the spiders to run amok on the bug population is why I have such a wonderful collection of webs.
@@mickles1975 me too. At least one per window. Also have full year Halloween decorations!
I'm surprised you didn't reference the gold orb weaver cloth on display in the American museum of natural history in New York City. It's an 11X4 ft cloth made from pure gold orb weaver spider silk and is probably the most expensive piece of cloth in the world considering it took 4 years and a MILLION spiders to make.
In case you want to learn more: ua-cam.com/video/-cx2YhqIP_M/v-deo.html
yes but its impractical and spider is not a social speciment (not entirely though there are social spiders) However its very difficult and impractical to make a ball of spider silk buy just collecting silk.....search silk DNA instead
I just commented the same thing, I was waiting for him to tell us about it but it didn’t even get a mention. Then I saw your comment, glad I wasn’t the only one who noticed lol.
"To make the silk ourselves, we have to figure out a way to spin our replicated dope"
*Stares at cotton candy machine*
hahaha this great, made me stop and think too
"A spider's dragline silk, which is what it uses to stealthily drop onto your face while you're sleeping..."
...Great, this is what I want to hear before going to sleep.. 😱
it technically gets worse...People Swallow 8 Spiders a Year While They Sleep...not sleeping tonight either
I was wondering if someone was gonna comment on that.
@@scottmantooth8785 no they dont
@@benaskalinskas4154 it's not as if being swallowed is the spiders idea...and it's not like they would be large ones either... even if this theory has been debunked by snopes i'm still not happy about the mere chance of the possibility of accidental consumption of arachnids during my voluntary unconscious regeneration cycle
@@scottmantooth8785 I really think that most people who had swallowed spiders, were doing it on purpose.
Dude, making spider silk would be *dope.*
Give this scientist a medal for that name.
"We have to not only figure out a way to replicate the dope, we also have to find a way to spin it." That's 100% talking about making and selling illegal drugs.
high quality and reliable spider silk technology is going to be the next CBD oil franchise....cash in now while you can
FBI is already alerted. They try to figure out where the illegal shipment of dope-filled spiders is supposed to enter the US.
If only spiders lived in colonies, like other invertebrates...
_Wait that's a bad idea._
*There are spiders who live in colonies and pictures showing them covering in cobwebs trees and stuff* in Greece, Brazil, Australia...
@@MariaMartinez-researcher Wow. Thanks for that.
@@MariaMartinez-researcher actually the ones that made colonies in Greece or everywhere else are not communal but the conditions made them to act as communal because of the amount of mosquitoes they found and multiplied in huge numbers (tetragnatha spiders spp was the spider - i am from Greece) . However communal spider are anelosimus eximius in tropics (no dangerous) / agelena consociata etc... There are many communal spiders but still its very difficult to analyse the web and its totally impractical to gather it to produce silk as we now it.
@@gfanarakos (You have just added another layer to our nightmares... spiders that just acting by themselves create those huge webs, and spiders that do act as a community. Next step, all spiders acting in consort to dominate Earth, while humans run in terror... while screaming their scientific names!)
@@MariaMartinez-researcher that actually happened last september...check its natural and than god it happened cause people there could not get out beacuse of moquitoes... dont fool yourself with jokes... learning is the key .... ua-cam.com/video/my7mk2bVJz0/v-deo.html
Hank: “scientists still haven’t been able to replicate spider silk. “
Peter Parker: *awkwardly closes bubbling drawer in his chemistry lab*
SciShow: “Why can't we make spider silk?”
Pete Parker: “Hold my beer”
hold my tired joke
@@AxxLAfriku it may be bcz you post lame comments all over the platform just like this one
That's awesome.😁😁😁
@@AxxLAfriku Your into video gave me cancer. Wtf
Evariste Galois You know I’m something of a scientist myself.
yeah harvest that dope
If they think theres bacteria in the dope, couldn't they stick it in petri dish and incubate the bacteria to get more? (I truly don't know if it's that easy aha)
Now now, don't hate on golden orb weavers too much. They aren't all that aggressive, even if they are somewhat intimidating because of their size. I am no fan of spiders, but I had a golden orb weaver that made her home in my screen door for three years - and then one of her daughters took the spot for another year. There was no screen cloth in the door: but thanks to the spider I could leave the door open in the evenings anyway! Worked out great for both parties. She never got upset at us for opening or shutting the door, just hung out and did her spider thing.
It's no surprise really that science hasn't nailed down how to make the exact silk, but it's fascinating research and well worth the effort even if we never manage spider-silk bridge cables.
I don't hate them, I just don't like whenever I see one I have to keep my hand at my shotgun.
Who else here after The Thought Emporium actually did it?
Actually some german company mades spider silk since 2014 www.amsilk.com/industries/biosteel-fibers/
The stronger then steel needs an astrix. It has a greather tensile strength on weight, it is not stronger in all conditions.
than *
Yep. Silk has a higher Ultimate Tensile Strength. It's worse by a long list of other metrics
A big problem, IMO, with spider silk is that it degrades when exposed to UV. That kind of puts a damper on most structural uses.
@@patrickmccurry1563 but we could coat it in areas where light degradation is an issue
Cables and stuff is what we could use it for that’s what he’s saying. And vests kinda like Kevlar high tensile makes it bulletproof
Because if we made it it'd be human silk, not spider silk
*INSERT MIND BLOWN GIF*
I... um... what?
And, you beat me to it by 12 hours.
Hello, dad. ^o^
bruh
I remember seeing a video about a guy who took a bunch of golden orb weaver spiders, harvested their draglines, and weaved a textile from it about the size of a welcome mat. I believe it's in a museum somewhere. It's really beautiful and the threads extremely strong from what I remember.
The Thought Emporium just flexed on your whole video.
Spider silk is literally Dope
Was the animation of the spider slowly lowering itself onto the sleeping woman really necessary? D: ):
Dont worry, it's just a joke. Spiders usually wont do that. I believe they've already done a video on the subject :)
Yes, of course.
Did that frighten you? Just do what Sabrina from "Raising Hope" used to do. Sleep with pantyhose on your head so as to cover your mouth.
Scared of an animation! I'm forever removing these ones from the house (live, by hand). Ohhh, when annoyed they launch at you.
ua-cam.com/video/ce9O7Xnvqnk/v-deo.html
@@skbartistry2473 My grandma's house which I was living in had a spider problem. I would routinely have a spider drop from drag silk on to my face while I slept on a regular basis.
"We could take *dope* directly from spiders"
"Or, we could engineer bacteria or other organisms to make *dope* for us"
*Drug dealers everywhere want to know your location*
That is some Dope Spidroins!! 🕷👍
Spider silk is basically real life Vibranium
You could say spider silk is pretty... Dope
Isn't it lol 😂 (both of ways)
About the spiders not being social or so territorial that they eat each other, you guys did post a video a while ago that featured a species of spider that are social (like hundreds strong) so they can make a LOTS of webbing and probably not take up a huge amount of space like those that aren't social. It might not be Golden Orb Weaver strength, but i think its a great start!
The thought emporium just did it by making yeast produce spider silk. It's really amazing
Ant-spider hybrid? Social creature, use hormones scents to guide their path of spinning the web. Also a good horror movie franchise.
Bees are just as social and produce honey. I can see nothing going wrong with spider honey, and bee silk. :)
Never seen the film "Arachnophobia"?
There are some spider species that live in colonies in communal web, for example Anelosimus eximius.
Vault Hunter Has Entered The Chat
Patrick McCurry
With each other, yes. They don't exactly like us stealing their honey.
The problem with bee/spider hybrids is you'd be mixing two very aggressive, territorial species. That could go very badly pretty easily, the last thing we need is another killer bee species, or spider equivalent.
'We could engineer bacteria or other organisms to make dope for us.' -SciShow 2019
Great video, very educational!
Thanks - that was a good episode!
I have a theory that there are two Hanks. One the introspective, nervous, doubting Vlogbrother carefully examining the world; the other the upbeat science geek. John has been keeping the secret of his identical twin brothers all this time.
Organon there are actually two of them. If that’s what you mean. In fact there’s also muscle hank, a clone that kinda got messed up in the gene area and got way too jacked.
@@joshuamirabal3617
Cloning is for the weak!
“Why do scientists thing it’s worth doing?”
Uh, who *doesn’t* want to be Spider-Man?
Thank you for this!! I was staring at my yarn.. thinking about spinning and silk and all morning I thought wait there has to be spider silk and if not then why not? Perfect video!
The future is now.
Yeah the Thought emporium has done incredible work
Maybe spiderman will become a reality one day ?!
That Spider silk is dope yo
This whole concept to me is absolutely nuts, crazy little creepers!
Watch a documentary on bio hacking :) Want your cactus to glow in the dark by adding algae DNA to it? I can do that in my garage. What color do you want? I can do blue, green and red.
I love the humorous images in the background, like the spider heading for the woman's face...
I think dope is illegal in most countries.
sweet that's dope :)
Because we’re not spiders. Duhh
You are above Einstein.
Speak for yourself.
r/notKenM
@D4RKplayz then it would be human silk
I...am slightly ashamed to admit that I thought the video was about why our bodies can't make it instead of the whole manufacturing thing
What about Spider _Milk?_
That’s honestly what I thought the title of his video was.
Or spider cider?
No.
No no no.
No.
Just no.
💚 *quality content* 💚
Thank you, Hank!
Spiders are my favorite animals! 😍
Look up "Goats that produce spider silk." They have goats which have the spider silk protein in their milk. The story I found was dated 2010 and there is another, more recently, which talks of separating the spider silk protein and making it into fibers which can then be woven. The original goal, as I understand it, was to make bullet proof vests.
‘Your friendly neighborhood spider silk’ doesn’t sound right
Ayeeee
We have to replicate the DOPE!, dude.
This is the content I love
I must say I liked this sponsor more than any other!
Shout out to Thought Emporium
yes
scishow: we can't make spider silk "the truth is that we just don't know enough spidroin genes... (3:07) "
Me: hold on... *looks in comment section... realizes that scishow got served from The Though Emporium *
Me: ok never mind, justice had been already done by the though Emporium.
*this was the day where scishow didn't do there homework and got shredded by community *
pretty *dope* episode!
This video is soooo useful I always wonder about this... literally everyday
Omg I thought the title said spider milk 😂😂
Okay, thanks. Now I have a mental image that I can't get rid of.
John Opalko I tend to do that to people 😂 😬
When the *SPIDER PULLS* the *DOPE* through a *SPINNING VALVE* in it's *BODY* it *DRIES* into a *SPINNABLE FIBER*
Spiders are aliens.
really love that video :D
1:23 omg, when I saw that spider start lowering itself further I started getting anxiety
_If you shave a Spider do you get wool?_
Laughs in Thought Emporium
Pretty dope video!
Dude... That's dope.
Pretty sure we can't make human hair either, but we probably haven't tried as hard.
Funnily enough I was thinking about this same thing, lol
Well, we have humans to make human hair for us. They're pretty good at it, so there's no real reason to engineer a different system.
@@wasd____ damn hippies
1:04 Well I'm not sleeping tonight...
I can't help but laugh hysterically every time he says DOPE talking about spider webs.
Couldn't help but smirk everytime he said dope
Is spider silk really as strong as steel? I have always heard this fact repeated but I have never seen any kind of experiment or proof to show that it is true.
That notion's truth is in the density/mechanical properties proportions. If you were to have a line of steel the size of a line of spider silk (smaller than a human hair), you will see that the spider silk is more robust. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2658765/ Table 1 in this article gives a nice outline of what I just said.
It has a greather tensile strength per unit weight, steel does better when comparing cross section. It really does have some great properties but it is a shame it is so often glossed over as stronger then steel. They have done controlled tension failure tests on it in materials labs and you can actually find its Yonng's modulus, maximum elongation and yeild strength for the silk of several different species of spider.
It is. What people forget to mention though, that it is stronger than a steel rod _of the same diameter._ Which is usually a thousandth of a millimeter...
@@DarthBiomech Its stronger then a rod of steel the same mass, by diameter steel is actually stronger. The strength measurement in table 1 linked by @Naude shows that where the breaking strength of spider silk is 1.1 GPa and steel is 1.5 GPa. They both lose to kevlar and carbon nano tubes at 3.6 GPa and 4 GPa respectively
Yes, as a strand/wire of the same size. As spider silk (S from now on) does not generally exist in larger sizes, it's a silly comparison.
I have not read about S being manipulated into complex structures as practical material sciences is all about, nor have I read of S even being woven into simple rope beyond the earliest of experiments.
If you're thinking of being on the cutting edge of science, you can study this. ;)
Wow. It makes Peter Parker seem a bit selfish. He worked all that stuff out by himself, and didn’t share that information. Of course, if he did, villains could use it for evil.
when saying evil in relation to super villains you're supposed to hyphenate the word for emphasis as in
E-VIL followed by many exclamation marks!!!!!!! comic book cannon...works in real life as well
That's dope, literally.
This is so dope!
All we have to do is make some DOPE! XD
The thought emporium is close (UA-cam)
gmo spiders into being more like the chill silk worms that we all know and love.
This video was pretty dope.
Because only Spider-Man can make spider silk.
Because we aren't spiders, duh
the idea seems pretty dope
thats a dope idea
*The Thought Emporium has entered the chat*
Totally rekt XD
*WE COULD TAKE DOPE DIRECTLY FROM SPIDERS*
there are some social spiders that build enormous webs that sometimes reach across rivers that has enough trees to allow so.
the silk they produce should be looked upon.
Watching this and thankful there’s an update with more accurate information. I knew silk farming from spiders was already a thing, ur the thing that puzzles me is why we can’t take the dope from spiders and, instead of using it to mass produce webs, USE the dope to understand it’s structure and how it works. Study how it’s manufactured and the proteins and designs necessary to turn it into something that can be spun, THEN, manufacture something similar to the spinnerets in a spider’s abdomen that spool the dope out into a folded strand that becomes the silk. Start small, then work up to higher scales, using biodegradable and earth safe products to achieve the most natural results. Ideally, learning the chemical makeup of dope, manufacturing it wouldn’t be too difficult since they are natural substances, and complications in creating “genuine” spider silk would arise mainly from scale and it certain necessary proteins and processes were only possible in the environment of a spider’s abdomen. If we know this specific substance’s useful properties, creating something adjacent to it would need to be studied in order to find if it actually matches spider silk step for step in the assets that make it valuable.
Was it *really* necessary to show a spider creeping down towards a sleeping person's head..?
Yes
Yes. Yes it was.
Yes. Very necessary.
I thought the title said "spider milk".. SPIDER MILK!!! How could I mess up this much??? You've no idea the thoughts that crossed my mind!!! Hahahahah
This video was dope.
2:12 That's *DOPE* (pun intended).
I just watched a guy make silk
Hey when else laugh when he kept saying dope
The dragline silk troll was 👌
Nice info...
Why don’t scientists try to biologically engineer ourselves to have stronger bones.
So we jump of tall things without breaking our legs.
Ethical implications and limitations with DNA editing technology
Have fun with those g forces of sudden deceleration bruh.
Stronger bones means less flexibility. Usually bones don't break for being not strong enough but for not being flexible enough.
@D4RKplayz What are you, Finnish?
Spiders (and other arthropods) that can do this don't gain the ability from their body structure. They get it from being small. The smaller you are, the less falling from a great height matters.
Try telling this to the Thought Emporium
I had to scroll way too much to find this comment.
@@DiThi ctrl-F next time :P
@@trabladorr I did! But I have to scroll so less popular comments load.
@@DiThi Didn't think of that! Your upvotes made it easier for me to find :D
This comment aged well :)
great video. add to that that only recently we know the total sequence of these spiders and we havent event scratch the surface of the components of the silk, which in conjunction synergistic. Also, just think the same spider making the dragline and the properties varies quite a lot. So we have bio-inspiered materials but not silk.
That was dope.
Hank, I think you get pleasure from freaking people out! Spiders on our faces! Argh!
Spiders V. Tasers= you only make a stronger and more highly agitated arachnid with electro-magnetic discharge capabilities what can spin webs to capture you then taunts you as it jumps up and down on your face
Top ten questions scientists still cannot answer
Stop following me god damn it
Yes
nah your comment isnt funny this time
watch the video, i might respect you a bit more...
Hey, Justin.
DOPE video
Quite the liquid crystalline solution
That's pretty dope .