Washington: Scientists are developing super strong synthetic spider silk, which is five times stronger than steel. This new development can stop a speeding train, just like the scene in Hollywood flick 'Spiderman 2'.
"Spider silk of fantastical, superhero strength is finally speeding towards commercial reality - at least a synthetic version of it is," said Researchers.
"We calculated roughly how thick the fibres were, how many of them he had attached to the walls, how much the locomotive and people weighed, and how fast it appeared to be going," added Randy Lewis, Professor of Utah State University.
Spider silk's impressive strength has been studied for years, and scientists have been trying to make a synthetic version of the super-strong protein in the lab. Researchers are coaxing not just genetically engineered bacteria but also goats, transgenic silkworms and alfalfa in order to produce multiple different versions of synthetic spider and spider-silkworm silks
So far, commercialisation has been on a modest scale. However, the research pipeline for synthetic spider silk is very active, and scientists expect that production is right on the verge of scaling up.
