Friday, July 30th, 2010

Silk

Silkworms spin, depending on breed, between hundreds of meters to over a kilometer of continuous silk fiber to generate a cocoon for protection and permit the development of the pupa. Image courtesy of Fiorenzo Omenetto.

It's smooth, slippery, and strong -- but despite the efforts of many researchers, spiders and caterpillars do it best. Efforts to create silk matching that produced by silkworms and spiders have fallen short, in part because researchers aren't entirely sure how the spinners of the animal kingdom manage the chemistry going on in their bodies. We'll talk about what's known about silk, what researchers still need to figure out, and about potential applications for the fibers in everything from medical implants to electronic devices.