What stayed with me is how spider silk blends protein chemistry with a precise manufacturing sequence. The proteins are essential, yet the real magic seems to happen during spinning: flow, shear, pH and ion shifts, and controlled self assembly that turn soluble molecules into a high performance fiber.
This also feels like a preview of where biofabrication is heading. More breakthroughs may come from mastering biological workflows that shape structure over time, rather than hunting for a single miracle molecule. Spider silk reads like a case study in how living systems manufacture by guiding materials through transitions.
Where do you think the decisive advance will come from? Better recombinant silk proteins, better spinning hardware, or a deeper understanding of the biochemical control steps spiders use?
Actually, it moves well beyond spiders. We are learning from a wide range of species across different taxa that all create 'extracellular fibers', which have the advantage that the fiber formation mechanism isn't cellularly controlled - it is instead stimuli from the environment that trigger fiber formation (physics and chemistry). So this provides us with evidence that the understanding is there, but our spinning hardware (and approach) needs an upgrade. I detail this out a bit more in this video here -> https://iflab.substack.com/p/impossible-fiber-beginnings
What stayed with me is how spider silk blends protein chemistry with a precise manufacturing sequence. The proteins are essential, yet the real magic seems to happen during spinning: flow, shear, pH and ion shifts, and controlled self assembly that turn soluble molecules into a high performance fiber.
This also feels like a preview of where biofabrication is heading. More breakthroughs may come from mastering biological workflows that shape structure over time, rather than hunting for a single miracle molecule. Spider silk reads like a case study in how living systems manufacture by guiding materials through transitions.
Where do you think the decisive advance will come from? Better recombinant silk proteins, better spinning hardware, or a deeper understanding of the biochemical control steps spiders use?
Actually, it moves well beyond spiders. We are learning from a wide range of species across different taxa that all create 'extracellular fibers', which have the advantage that the fiber formation mechanism isn't cellularly controlled - it is instead stimuli from the environment that trigger fiber formation (physics and chemistry). So this provides us with evidence that the understanding is there, but our spinning hardware (and approach) needs an upgrade. I detail this out a bit more in this video here -> https://iflab.substack.com/p/impossible-fiber-beginnings