![]() Widmaier takes me through the lab spaces, which are separated according to the different phases of the team's spider silk production. A ceiling-to-floor art panel with Bolt Threads' primary amino acid sequence for its engineered silk is displayed amongst a cluster of conference rooms named after different textiles: lace, velvet, silk, gingham, poplin and tweed. White's Charlotte's Web is* *resting on a table by the lobby couches. (Widmaier says the fermentation team is off on a training trip in Michigan.) When I come for a visit on a recent afternoon, a copy of E.B. There's not too many people to meet in Bolt Threads' laboratory, a 33,000-square-foot space on the fourth floor of a squat building right off the I-80 highway in Emeryville. It doesn’t keep groups from trying though, and every few months or so, it seems, news of some spider silk breakthrough goes viral, only to quiet down after a few months. Spider silk protein is complex, and even when experimenters are able to create fibers, these come out so fine that entirely new spinning systems need to be invented from scratch to turn the strands into thread. ![]() All of these efforts, however, have seen little success. They’ve tried raising genetically engineered silkworms, or inserting genes into microorganisms to express the needed spider silk protein. So people have had to resort to creative workarounds. The problem is there’s no way to get the silk from spiders themselves-creatures known to be territorial and cannibalistic, which doesn't lend itself to raising them in groups. But so far, every group that’s attempted to produce enough of the stuff to bring it to the mass market, from researchers to giant corporations, has pretty much failed. As a naturally occurring supermaterial, spider silk is five times stronger than steel and more elastic than rubber bands, which suggests some amazing potential use cases, including bulletproof vests, biodegradable water bottles, and flexible bridge suspension ropes. ![]() For years, materials scientists have been trying to figure out a way to give consumers broad access to the benefits of spider silk. ![]()
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