What if your skin could resist a speeding bullet? Now a new futuristic tissue designed by artist Jalila Essaïdi,
which reinforces human skin cells with spider silk, can stop a whizzing
projectile without being pierced. Although its threads may look
fragile, a spider-silk weave is four times stronger than Kevlar, the material used in bulletproof vests.
In
the first clip, the bioengineered skin cushions a bullet fired at half
speed. But its resistance has its limits: when shot at a full speed of
329 m/s, the bullet pierces the material and travels through it. The
same tests were also performed with piglet skin, human skin and human
skin fused with regular silkworm silk, which were all penetrated by
bullets of both speeds.
An international team worked together to create the new material. First, transgenic goats and silkworms equipped to produce spider-silk proteins spun out the raw material in the synthetic biology lab at Utah State University.
The cocoons were then shipped to South Korea, where they were reeled
into thread, before being woven into fabric in Germany. The modified
silk was then wedged between bioengineered skin cells developed by
biochemist Abdoelwaheb El Ghalbzouri
at the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands. After five
weeks of incubation, the hybrid skin was ready for target practice.
In
addition to exploring the material artistically, Essaïdi is also
looking into practical uses, such as skin transplants. Spider silk is
already being developed by other teams for high-tech applications, which range from artificial corneas to brain implants.
For more about spider silk spin-offs, check out our full-length feature: "Stretching
spider silk to its high-tech limits". Or you might also like to find out about the science behind a lavish golden spider-silk cape, currently on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
http://www.newscientist.com/
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