Artificial industrial-use spider silk developed

Researchers at the Karolinska Institutet and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) announced that they have developed spider silk that can be produced in large volumes without strong chemicals. This would make it possible to scale up this strong fiber for industrial and medical applications. 

“In this study, we have developed a production method that produces ten times more spider silk protein than has ever been achieved before,” says Anna Rising, senior researcher at the Dept. of Biosciences and Nutrition, Karolinska Institutet and the study’s last author. 

The research team uses a biomimetic spinning device, which mimics how spider silk is produced naturally, and the fibers produced now are the toughest artificial spider silk fibers to date made with only aqueous solutions.