Alexis Robinson
30 years ago Randy Lewis was working with a company in California trying to figure out if it was possible to combine silkworm silk with e coli for certain things. After much trial and error his team found out that it would not work at all. Silkworm silk is elastic but not very strong. He brainstormed ideas for a few hours and thought about using spider silk. After many days and hours of research on the subject of spiders and their silk he found out that the silk of a spider was elastic and strong enough for what they wanted to do. Talking to the project manager, Randy asked if he could take the reins and see where it would take them. He had done all of the research after all. The Office of Naval Research gave them two years worth of funding to find the gene of the spider that makes the silk and clone it. “It took my team and I a year and a few months for us to find and clone the gene. We created our company and launched our findings a year later.” Randy Lewis stated. Most of the work that Randy does is generate ideas for his team and help solve problems. Using his knowledge of chemistry and silk fibers, he found a way to put the silk gene of the spider into goats and silkworms to collect the silk protein and fibers. Some may ask why not just use spiders to collect the silk? One problem with using spiders is that they tend to be cannibalistic when there are multiple together. Another reason is that spiders spin six different types of silk at one time, so it makes it nearly impossible to collect them. Once the ‘spider-goats’ that have the gene have produced their milk, Randy and his team put the milk of the goats into a machine that they have created that isolates the protein of the silk from the milk. From the protein they spin it into fibers or use it to create many different types of things. The one problem that they have is that there are so many uses of the silk that they have to pick and choose what they get to do. When the silkworms with the spider gene have spun cocoons, the team puts the cocoons into hot water. After the cocoons are soaked in hot water they put them into a machine that spins the cocoons into individual fibers. At this stage the team can decide how thick they want the fibers to be. They can use these fibers that they have created that are stronger than carbon fiber for whatever they choose to do. “We use the silk and the proteins for a variety of things. Our problem is that there are so many uses for the silk, and we don’t have the space so we have to pick and choose. The fibers we spin into a non-petroleum based fiber which is elastic and stronger than carbon fibers. The non-fiber forms go into either industrial or medical uses. For example, for industrial we have created a glue that is stronger than super glue. For medical we coated a catheter in the protein and made it bendable, and we can add more things like blood clotters and vitamins and even more.” Randy Lewis said. At this moment they are the only facility that uses goats and silkworms with spider silk. We as a community do not see other facilities do this because it is hard to mass produce the silk. Even Randy and his team have problems with this. One of their current projects is for the U.S Navy about Hagfish slime. Hagfish slime is very sticky, the Hagfish use their slime to encompass their predators to save themselves immediate danger. Their goal is to try to use the slime and its fibers in non-lethal warfare.
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