Madagascarians have created the largest spider silk canvas. Web Armor Vest Web Silk

Spider silk is a wonderful material with lightness, elasticity and amazing strength. Dan Widmaier, CEO of Bolt Threads, is confident that genetically engineered silk is the future of the textile industry.

In 1709, François Xavier Beaune de Saint Hilaire, President of the Court of Accounts, Duties and Finance at Montpellier in France, presented the Sun King Louis XIV with a pair of spider silk socks made from hundreds of carefully selected cocoons. “Now the only difficulty is the process of obtaining the necessary number of cocoons to make something worthwhile,” Bon wrote in a letter addressed to the Royal Society of Britain in the same year. Three centuries later, the (not so unimportant) difficulty was solved, and non-royals for the first time got the opportunity to buy a piece of clothing made of gossamer silk - a sea-green tie, produced in a limited edition of fifty pieces by Bolt Threads, engaged in.

Of course, spiders have long been producing silk for their own purposes. According to Paul Hilliard, author of The Private Lives of Spiders ( Private Life of Spiders, this was first noticed in the state of New York at the excavation site of the Devonian shale, which is 380 million years old: in this place, paleontologists found a fossilized abdominal part of a spider, resembling a shower head with twenty holes through which ancient spiders isolated silk fibers to then connect them into one thread. Since then, spiders have developed seven different silk glands. Male crab spiders weave vine-like silk with which to bind females before mating; females weave tubular cocoons; mason spiders secrete special sticky droplets with which they create hinged hatches from layers of earth and silk.

But the most practical is the bubble-like shape (or skeletal thread) that spiders use to lower and reinforce their webs. Together, these different silks are used in the production of a wide variety of things: diving capsules, canopies, and even camouflage. "A small sloppy-looking spot of white silk could be mistaken for bird droppings," writes Hilliard.

But a person is far from the skill of the spiders themselves, if we talk about the use of spider silk. The ancient Greeks, according to scientists, used cocoons as bandages, and the fishermen of New Guinea wove a web of orb-weaving spiders into a net. In the clothing industry, weaker silkworm threads were used. Bon attributed this to humanity's prejudices about "disgusting insects," but it would be more accurate to say that spiders proved difficult to tame.

Bon notes that "breeding young spiders in the room always ended the same way: they behaved hostilely and, in the end, ate each other." Which is a shame, because spider silk is a wonderful material. Known for its strength, it can be stronger than steel and more tear resistant than Kevlar i Kevlar Durable armid fiber fabric.

A person can easily pass through a spider web just because each thread has a diameter of 0.003 millimeters. If the diameter reached a whole millimeter, then, apparently, such a web could catch a helicopter as effectively as it now catches flies.

Spider silk has exceptional elasticity and lightness. Some silks can stretch five times their original length before breaking, and a thread long enough to circle the earth would weigh no more than a pound. Spiders are capable chemists who often endow their silks with moisture-wicking and anti-fungal properties.

Attracted by this prospect, some enterprising silk lovers tried to follow in the footsteps of Bon - and every single one stumbled upon the problem of scale. Civil War anatomist Bert Greene Wilder, famous for pioneering the use of the term "neuron" in print (and for collecting brains in jars), claimed to have been able to obtain 150 yards of gold thread woven by a large silkworm during service in Folly Island in Southern California.

Encouraged, Wilder began to develop a machine for extracting silk, which resembled tiny medieval stocks: a suspended wooden board fixed the head and legs of the spider on one side and the abdomen on the other, and a manual reel extracted the silk. It was a contraption, but Wilder later admitted that it would take silk from five thousand spiders to make one dress. A hundred years have passed, but science has not advanced in this area. In 1982, researchers at Northern California University published journals describing an "apparatus and technique for forcibly extracting silk from spiders"—actually an improved version of Wilder's device that could house dozens of arachnids.

Cloth of gold thread. Source: Ecouterre.

Then came the genetic revolution in the 1990s, and with it the opportunity to endow less aggressive DNA to produce spider silk. The silkworm farm was no longer required; genetically modified E. coli, yeast, tobacco sprouts, and even goats were suitable. The remains of a herd of BioSteel goats funded by the Department of Defense are now at the University of Utah, as the company that bred them for the production of spider silk has filed for bankruptcy.

The problem was that even after cutting the living spiders out of the equation, the process remained, in the words of Dan Wiedmyer, CEO and co-founder of Bolt Threads, "labor-intensive." The company decided to produce silk using brewer's yeast fermented in stainless steel tanks with water and sugar. The genetic sequencing responsible for the production involved two of the four molecules that make up DNA, which meant the process was repetitive and easy to disrupt. Experimenting with sequences to get the yeast to secrete different types of silk protein was difficult.

Widmayer estimates that Bolt has worked on 4,000 formulas since it was founded in 2009. “Then, once you've finished fermenting and you've got this beautiful protein, the challenge is to extract it in high quality so you can use the protein as raw material for yarn,” he says. In other words, the yeast had to come out perfectly defined - in order for it to be able to secrete silk, otherwise Widmayer and his colleagues would have to collect individual cells.

When the silk proteins were separated from the water saturated with sugar and yeast in fermentation tanks, they were purified and turned into a powder. "The mixture was like one of the protein drinks," Widmayer remarked. The solution was then added to the powder until it became as viscous as rubber cement; the resulting mass is called dope and can be forced through a spinneret to form fibres.

In nature, the spider uses a push-and-pull mechanism to turn its spinning solution into thread: a sudden drop in blood pressure causes the viscous silk protein to come out of holes in the abdomen, then the spider collects the droplets into strands with its paws and weight.

“Many routine and drawn-out processes can go wrong during yarn,” said Wiedmeier. Any adjustments that affect protein purification, viscosity, acidity, and temperature can turn the dope into a sticky mass that will produce droplets rather than filaments. That's why Widmayer is proud that his company has managed to produce 50 ties, each with 90 kilometers of gossamer thread.

The Chinese were the first to start experiments on the production of fabric from the web. And they succeeded. They called their exceptionally strong and durable web fabric tong-hai-tuan-tse, better known to us as "satin of the eastern sea."

But regardless of the Chinese, such a bright idea came to the heads of Europeans as making fabric from cobwebs.

Historical records have been preserved that in March 1665, meadows and fences near the Saxon town of Merseburg were covered with a great many webs of unknown spiders, and from it the women of the surrounding villages made themselves ribbons and various decorations. A little later, people learned to weave a fabric from the web - incredibly thin and very expensive. Only for VIPs. Once the parliament of the city of Montpellier presented the King of France, Louis XIV, with the finest stockings and gloves woven from silky threads of French spiders.

The same exquisite gift was awarded to the trendsetter in France at that time, Josephine Beauharnais herself - Napoleon's beloved.

Perhaps, in the painting by Guillaume Lethierre, the regal Josephine crushes spider silk gloves in her hand?

Nearly a century later, the famous French naturalist Orbigny sported pantaloons made from the webs of Brazilian spiders. He wore them for a long time, but they did not wear out. Orbigny wore them to a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences. But the French Academy was not surprised by the pantaloons from the web: it had already seen such curiosities and even discussed the question of whether it is worth recommending the weaving industry as a yarn for silk fabrics.

The Academy elected a commission, which was charged with studying in detail the reality and profitability of spider sericulture and silk weaving. Reaumur, a member of this commission, found the web quite suitable raw material for industrial production, but decided that the local, French, spiders did not weave threads of the required length. He calculated (very meticulously) that it would take 522-663 spiders to process one pound of spider silk. And industrial production will require hordes of spiders and clouds of flies to feed them - more than they fly over all of France. “However,” Reaumur wrote, “perhaps in time it will be possible to find spiders that give more silk than those that are usually found in our state.”

Such spiders were soon indeed found in the virgin forests of Madagascar. Travelers said that one spider per month easily pulls out three or four kilometers of the thinnest threads. The thread is so thin that it is practically invisible, but incredibly strong - a pith helmet will hang on it and it will not break; the birds get tangled in it and die, unable to break the thin thread!

These amazing spiders were called nephiles. Nature spared neither the colors nor the talents necessary for weavers, and generously endowed the nephil with them. The golden reflection of the threads gave these spiders another unofficial name - golden spiders.

Already today, the strength of the nephil web has been experimentally tested. A thread one-tenth of a millimeter thick can withstand 80 grams (silkworm thread - only 4-15 grams). It is so elastic that it stretches almost a quarter of its length and does not tear. The fabric of golden nephila web is surprisingly airy and light; with the same strength, it is much thinner than a silkworm thread, and with the same thickness, it is much stronger. Cobwebs for yarn are collected from nephil nets or their egg cocoons are unwound. But it is better to pull it directly from the spider, which is put in a box - only the tip of its abdomen with spider webs sticks out of it. Elastic threads are pulled out of the warts in the same way as a cocoon is unwound. In this way, about four thousand (4000!) Meters of silk thread can be obtained from one spider in a month. For comparison, a thread untangled from a silkworm cocoon, depending on its breed, is from three hundred to five hundred meters long.

The most inventive experimenter turned out to be a certain Abbé Cambouet. Exploring the silkworm possibilities of the Madagascar galaba spider, this ingenious person managed to improve his business so much that he “connected” living spiders in small drawers directly to a special type of weaving loom. The loom pulled threads from spiders and immediately wove the finest silk from them.

If you collect a large amount of this spider "gold", and make silk threads out of it, then you can weave a unique canvas of natural gold color. And that's exactly what designers Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley have been doing for the last three years.

Their studio is located in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. With the help of about 80 local craftsmen, they wove and sewed a fashionable cape dress from “golden” spider silk, today - the largest product made from this unique natural material. It took the initiative group three years (according to some sources, five years), hundreds of thousands of orb-weaving spiders and many meters of priceless cobwebs to carry out their creative project. The result exceeded all expectations.

I note in advance that no one tortured or tortured the spiders, they were collected by specially trained people and placed in conditions close to natural. Since a spider can produce a limited amount of golden web per season, they were released into the wild as soon as the season came to an end, accepting a new batch of golden webs. By the way, the females of the golden weaver are extremely aggressive young ladies, although they are not poisonous. They can attack each other, or even eat their own kind, so from time to time design assistants responsible for keeping gold-bearing insects were missing their wards, but such is natural selection, unpredictable and cruel.

Having collected the required amount of golden yarn, it was twisted into threads, following a specially developed technique, and then a cloth was woven, also adhering to the recommendations that have been preserved since the 19th century, when outfits were woven from spider silk for members of royal families, the rulers of the Madagascar provinces.

Thanks to the thinnest and lightest silk thread created by spiders, the weight of the canvas was a little over a kilogram. The fabric was embroidered with a symbolic spider-themed pattern, and the finished cape dress, sewn from this precious fabric, can be seen in the London Victoria and Albert Museum. Despite the fact that one square meter of spider "gold" fabric is valued at $500,000, the unique outfit is not for sale.

The technology, developed about a hundred years ago by a French preacher, made it possible to collect a golden web from a million Madagascar spiders. A British historian and an American businessman commissioned her to create the world's largest spider silk tablecloth. The rarest handmade masterpiece will be exhibited in the US and UK.

Art historian Simon Peers and his American business partner Nicholas Godley hired dozens of workers to create a unique canvas measuring 3.4 by 1.2 meters.

One million orb spiders (golden orb spider) belonging to the genus Nephila. The scientist and entrepreneur spent almost five years of their lives and about $500,000 to make a piece of perhaps the most unusual fabric.

Goodley, American actress Heather Graham and Pierce at the opening of the exhibition at AMNH on September 23 this year (a large number of other distinguished guests were also invited). In their hands, of course, they have an ordinary scarf (photo by Will Ragozzino).

Goodley first came to Madagascar in 1994, where he created a small company for the production of goods from the fibers of the palm tree of the genus Raphia. In 1999, Nicholas released his first collection of fashion bags (probably made of the same material), and in 2005 he closed the factory and switched completely to the production of "spider fabric" with Pierce.

The Madagascar golden orb-web spider is just one of 36 species in the genus. Nephila. These spiders are found in the tropics and are known for weaving large golden webs (photo AMNH, JohnnyK / Picasa Web).

Goodley was inspired to create an unusual canvas by stories about how in the 19th century a French manager of one of the Madagascar provinces tried to do something similar. However, Nicholas did not know for sure whether these stories were true or fiction.

Some spiders died of their own death during the experiment, but most were still released. “We, without knowing it, have become the protectors of these creatures, and I am very happy, because I consider them worthy of the royal regalia,” Goodley says (photo ppoggio2 / flickr.com).

In fact, spider silk is not particularly popular with the inhabitants of Madagascar (and it is understandable, because the "standard" silkworm is much easier to grow). However, in the 19th century, the subjects of the Merina Kingdom still decided to work with him. Web products were presented to members of the royal families. There was even a special tradition of weaving threads.

The first machine to obtain silk from 24 spiders was created by the French preacher Jacob Paul Camboué, who worked with them in the 80-90s of the XIX century. However, no pieces of cloth remain from his work (photo by AMNH).

Pierce and Goodley's work began with the fact that they hired 70 workers to collect spider species near the capital of Madagascar, Antananarivo. Nephila madagascariensis.

Only females create a unique strong web with a golden hue. The collection took place during the rainy season, since arthropods only spawn their webs at this time of the year (which imposes additional restrictions on the production process of the linen).

Spiders often place their homes between telephone and electrical wires. Sometimes the webs grow to such a gigantic size that they easily block a one-lane road (photo Tasumi1968 / flickr.com).

To create a kind of spinning factory, the spiders were placed in special chambers, where they were kept motionless. It must be said that Nephila madagascariensis not poisonous, but biting. Also, they may run away or eat each other. “At first we had 20 females, but soon ended up with three, albeit very fat ones,” Pierce says.

So in the end, the restless creatures were isolated from each other, while increasing the number of individuals living in the factory at the same time.

By the way, the “competitors” of the current masterpiece can only be considered those two pieces of “spider tissue” that are stored in one of the museums in Lyon. However, each of them does not exceed a few centimeters in width (photo by AMNH and from dailymail.co.uk).

Ten workers collected the webs hanging from the spinning organs of the spiders. From one individual in this way it was possible to obtain about 25 meters of precious material.

Pierce notes that fourteen thousand spiders yield approximately 28 grams of spider silk, and the total weight of the final piece of fabric was as much as 1180 grams!

US Army officers and police officers wear heavy, inflexible body armor for protective purposes, capable of providing an adequate level of protection. However, Madagascar spider silk is 10 times stronger than Kevlar, the material used in most bulletproof vests.

If it were possible to invent a method for the production of spider silk on an industrial scale, then bulletproof vests would be made from a lightweight, ultra-strong material that could reliably protect the body from bullets and shrapnel.

After several decades since the first experiments in this area were carried out, scientists finally have a real opportunity to find a way to make a protective vest from spider silk.

In addition to being a very innovative idea, it also implies that soldiers and police officers will be equipped with ultra-light flexible and heavy-duty body armor that can effectively resist bullets entering the body. Now American soldiers wear heavy, bulky, movement-restricting protective equipment. Usually these are extremely heavy vests with at least two ceramic plates designed to protect the upper body of a soldier from fragments of grenades and bullets.

The principle of operation of solid armor is that the reaction force of its surface is equivalent to the impact force of a bullet. However, the more protection the armor provides, the heavier and more uncomfortable the vest will be. The lightest bulletproof vest can only protect against a small-caliber projectile, the impact force of which is relatively low. The level of protection of solid armor can be increased by adding additional protective plates.

Despite the fact that personal protective equipment is very important, nevertheless, reminders quite often appear in the instructions for the police that an officer without body armor is 14 times more likely to be killed by a gunshot. Police officers have to choose between maneuverability, freedom of movement and the ability to be hit by a bullet.

Soldiers in war zones wear body armor on a daily basis, while police officers in less risky situations often prefer the convenience and lightness of medium-security armor. The bullet, colliding with the surface of the body armor, leaves a so-called behind-the-barrier injury on the body, distributing the impact force over all planes of the body, as a result of which it is not focused at one point. Soft fabric armor slows down the flight of a bullet or shrapnel due to the presence of several layers or intertwined fibers that act, in the manner of a fishing net, a spider's web.

Lightweight flexible armor with a high level of protection inherent in bulletproof vests of special forces soldiers was only a dream until recently.

DuPont's soft armor Kevlar fabric is said to be five times stronger than steel and is widely used by police officers. However, the strength of spider silk is still higher than its artificial counterparts, and for several decades, scientists have been trying to create armor in the style of spider-man.

Turn by turn, researchers are trying to assemble a spider web that is lighter in weight and at the same time three times more elastic than Kevlar, but also five times stronger than industrial steel. Despite its size and weight, spider silk has a natural ability to withstand the powerful force of a blow.

Last year, a group of German scientists from the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Sciences conducted research to determine the components of the mechanism by which spider silk becomes so strong. There are two key steps in the production of spider silk fabric: a soft, viscous gel is first contained in the spider's abdomen, then it turns into a very strong thread as the gel exits the spider's body. The results of the study, published in the Biophysical Journal, indicate that the ingredients that give silk its elasticity also contribute to making the thread extremely strong. And although the use of the properties of spider silk for one's own purposes does not seem to be a feasible task at first glance, nevertheless, the cherished goal is still very far away, and on the way to it it is not without serious difficulties.

Among the challenges facing scientists is the need to determine the genome of the ideal spider silk, as well as to find a way that would allow the synthesis of a protein element that produces silk, and also to determine the method for producing such a protein element in the required quantities.

For quite a long time, the subject of research was the representative of the most dangerous arachnids - the black widow, whose web is the source material for armor, the strength of which is higher than Kevlar and steel.

However, when breeding spiders, the researchers encountered one problem: the spiders could not get along with each other and were constantly at enmity, not producing enough material. In 2007, scientists at the University of California announced that they had unraveled the black widow silk genome and were looking forward to introducing engineered genes into tomato plants, which they believe could lead to tomatoes producing spider silk.

Tomato plants, grains, bacteria, yeast, and even goats have all been used, along with technical tools, at some time in an attempt to transform spider gel into solid threads.

Silkworms produce fine silk, but they have a huge natural potential to produce up to one kilometer of silk in a few days. In 1999, Thailand's Rajamangala Institute of Technology reported that a bulletproof vest had been created that used conventional webs, which were inexpensive to produce. During testing, 16 layers of silk were able to stop a 9mm bullet, and vests made from this material were successful in providing protection against shots fired from .22 caliber weapons.

The authors of a recent achievement in this area are representatives of the University of Wyoming, the results of their research appeared on the pages of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. According to published information, researchers have succeeded in genetically modifying silkworms to develop a mix of worm and spider silk that is as strong as spider silk.

It is believed that the Holy Grail of spider silk body armor will be found when the secret of the genome of the Madagascar spider, whose web is believed to be 10 times stronger than Kevlar, is revealed, such a discovery would allow the construction of silk factories. The silk of the Madagascar spider is considered the most durable material that exists on the planet, it is 100 times stronger than any other silk.

This spider was discovered in Madagascar last year, the diameter of its web can reach 25 meters, such a material is extremely elastic and its ability to withstand the force of a bullet impact is three times that of Kevlar.

Parachutes, air bags, sportswear, fishing nets - the list of potential uses for spider silk goes on.

It is currently being researched for medical uses in surgical suture threads, strong artificial tendons and ligaments, and as adjuncts for nerve tissue repair that use the resilience of silk.

To summarize all currently known information about the silk of the Madagascar spider, we can say that the use of such material in police body armor will be a revolution in the field of equipment for law enforcement officers.

Let's dream about weightless knitted blouse, durable as bulletproof vest. What fiber do you think it can be made from? You won't guess anything! Such a blouse will be knitted from yarn created from the web!

Spiders weave a web for hunting nets and a cozy mink. Young spiders go on a cobweb on adventures to distant places. And people have been trying for centuries to learn how to use the web for their own needs.

The ancient Chinese created silk from cobwebs, the Sun King had stockings and gloves knitted from spider silk, the French naturalist d'Orbigny sported cobweb pantaloons.

Stronger than steel, light and elastic, the web consists of protein molecules. The web can, without breaking, stretch to 40% of its length and is so light that a pound of web is more than enough to wrap around the globe.

It has been proven that the web also has antiseptic properties and promotes wound healing. Large spiders of the Nefila genus are famous for spinning huge nets up to 8 meters in diameter, which the fishermen of the Polynesian islands use to catch fish. In the photographs you just see these spiders and their webs.

So why haven't yarns with such amazing properties filled the store shelves? Because of their predatory nature, spiders are very difficult to breed in captivity, if you are going to start a spider farm, perhaps after a while your pets will simply eat each other. However, despite the difficulties, there are brave people creating spider farms, and Japanese scientists promise to release products made from the web soon.

And yet, despite all the difficulties and the cost of work, ready-made things from spider silk exist. Look at the robe presented to the public at an exhibition in London by Simon Pierce and Nicholas Goodley.

At the moment, this is the largest spider silk product in the world, and craftsmen have been working on its creation for more than four years. To do this, it took to collect a web of more than a million spiders.