A Japanese company called Spiber has successfully developed a technology that can create fabric from Spider silk. The produced material is claimed to be - not only supple and, of course, silky - but stronger than steel, paving the way for a host of applications in apparel, medical and even defense industries.
For starters, it is creating waves in the fashion industry. "Not since DuPont first launched Lycra 40 years ago has a textile come along set to revolutionize the fashion industry," Suzanne Lee, founder of the biotech conference called Biofabricate, said in a Popular Science report.
The process perfected by the Japanese firm did not involve live spiders feverishly spinning silk threads to meet industrial quota. The reason is that spiders cannot be put together in one place as they tend to attack and eat each other. There is one instance when a rare silk cloth was created out of silk threads from 1 million spiders, according to a Wired report. But the process took 4 years to complete with 70 people painstakingly harvesting spools of natural spider filament from golden orb spiders on telephone poles in Madagascar.
Spiber, on the other hand, bioengineered 656 spider genetic variations into microbes that can produce silk proteins. The proteins are purified into fine powder, which is then excreted through needles in order to create the fibers that are spun into threads. Spiber has demonstrated an actual output called Moon Parka, a gold-colored coat created in partnership with clothing company North Face.
The Spiber process is also expected to revolutionize the textile industry because of its clean environmental footprint. Presently, the industry accounts for a significant amount of pollutants around the world because the processes involved in manufacturing textiles rely on toxic chemicals, as demonstrated in a recent study.
Learn more about the Spiber technology in the video below.
