1 / 48

Spider Silk

Spider Silk. Dawson Bausman March 28, 2002. Variations Golden Orb Web Weaver. Spider Silk. Where does it come from? What is it? What are its advantageous properties? How can it be mass produced? What are the applications?. Where does it come from?. The seven glands are:

niveditha
Download Presentation

Spider Silk

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Spider Silk Dawson Bausman March 28, 2002

  2. Variations • Golden Orb Web Weaver

  3. Spider Silk • Where does it come from? • What is it? • What are its advantageous properties? • How can it be mass produced? • What are the applications?

  4. Where does it come from?

  5. The seven glands are: • Ampulleceae major and minor for walking threads and dragline • Pyriformes for the attaching threads • Aciniformes for encapsulating prey • Tubiliformes for the silk of the egg-sac • Coronatae threads for the axis of the sticking threads • Glandula aggregata for the sticky bindingmaterial

  6. Silk Releasing Tubes • 100-50,000 tubes • Strands as small as 20 nanometers

  7. Each fiber only 4 to 5 microns in diameter • Entire strand about 15 to 20 microns in diameter

  8. What is it? • 30% to 45% crystalline

  9. What is it? • More than 50% of silk is a polymerized protein called fibroine.

  10. What is it? • Exact sequence and structure unknown (at least unpublished) • Main contents are 7 natural Amino Acids • Alanine and Glycine • Glutamine, Leucine, Arginine, Tyrosine, Serine

  11. What is it? • 2 Alanine rich proteins embedded in a jelly like glycine rich polymer • 1 protein is highly ordered crystalline, other is not ordered. These proteins give toughness.

  12. What is it? • How can proteins compete with Kevlar???

  13. Advantageous Properties • Tailorable Properties

  14. Advantageous Properties Normal 5x 20x

  15. Diameter • Average is .15 mm • Smallest Measured is .02 mm • Human Detection • Insect Detection of the web

  16. Advantageous Properties • Coated with antiseptic agents (pyrolidin, potassium hydrogen phosphate and potassium nitrate) • Process proteins from water based solutions • Water

  17. Water

  18. Mechanical Properties • Inelastic or Elastic • Tough at low temperatures • Tensile Strength of 400,000 lbs / sq. in • 25% lighter than other synthetic petroleum based fibers • Specific Strength

  19. Nature vs. Man • Nature is uncertain and slow • Farming is not possible

  20. Mass Production • 22,000 base pairs to the genetic sequence • Believed to only need 300 of these pairs

  21. Mass Production • Plants, Fungi, Bacteria • Mammals

  22. Webster and Pete

  23. Stress Strain

  24. Draw Ratio

  25. Uses • Past – WWI Cross hairs, Tribal uses

  26. Uses • Medical - sutures, tendons, ligaments • $10,000/gram

  27. Uses • Textile Industry

  28. Automotive Industry

  29. Bullet Proof Vests

  30. Space Station Coatings

  31. Biodegradable Fishing Line

  32. Spider Man

  33. Conclusions: • Spider Silk is an excellent tailorable fiber material • There is quite a bit of work yet to be done to perfect the process of making silk • There are many potential applications of silk

  34. Acknowledgements: • Jeffery Turner and Chantal LaRouche of Nexia Biotechnologies • David Knight and Fritz Vollrath of Oxford University • Randy Lewis of the University of Wyoming

  35. QUESTIONS?

More Related