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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,

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Speaker 1: do you remember the myth of a ratney? Oh? Yes,

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Speaker 1: I do. It's a great one, right, because it follows

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Speaker 1: a familiar pattern. Right. You begin with a particularly skilled human, right,

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Speaker 1: a great mortal that has just a wondrous talent at

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Speaker 1: her disposal. A rackney. She's just a wonderful Weaver's an

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Speaker 1: expert weaver, just creates these beautiful tapestries, right, puffed up

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Speaker 1: with pride, I bet, But of course, yeah, In fact,

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Speaker 1: she ends up boasting of her skills, and either, depending

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Speaker 1: on what account you're looking at, either she actually challenges Athena,

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Speaker 1: the Goddess of Wisdom and Crafts, to a weaving competition,

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Speaker 1: or she just kind of talks about how great she

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Speaker 1: is and how she's better than Athena until Athena steps

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Speaker 1: up and uh, you know, and and accepts this challenge.

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Speaker 1: And of course this is a terrible idea. Right, You're

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Speaker 1: going up against a god who basically like pick axed

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Speaker 1: her way out of Zeus's brain, Right, Yeah, and like

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Speaker 1: all the Greek gods are are are basically terrible. I mean,

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Speaker 1: they're they're vain, they're petty, they're powerful, and uh, and

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Speaker 1: yet she ends up in this competition and then it

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Speaker 1: just gets it gets even worse from there. Um in

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Speaker 1: Ovid's telling, Athena's resulting tapestry illustrates past incidents where the

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Speaker 1: gods punished more mortals for their arrogance and uh. And

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Speaker 1: then Arachne responds by weaving in accounts of just how

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Speaker 1: massively abusive and just what kind of misleading jerks the

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Speaker 1: gods are towards humans. So, depending on which account you

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Speaker 1: look at, either Athena wins because she is a god

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Speaker 1: and no matter how great your mortal skill, you're gonna

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Speaker 1: get trump by a god. Or Athena notices that arachney

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Speaker 1: skill is actually superior to hers, and out of spite

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Speaker 1: she just kind of rage quits the entire competition. And

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Speaker 1: in either case she curses Athena and her descendants for

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Speaker 1: forever turning them into these minuscule web slinging arachnids that

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Speaker 1: we know and love today. And what is interesting about

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Speaker 1: that is that in some ways humans are still trying

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Speaker 1: to extend out this metaphor of trying to manipulate nature

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Speaker 1: for their own gain or go up against it. So

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Speaker 1: here's one from way back, and then we'll talk more

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Speaker 1: recently how we have been trying to do this, all right,

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Speaker 1: So we have one Francois xavier A ban Sae Hilaire,

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Speaker 1: who it turns out, took silk and he tried to

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Speaker 1: do what the gods what nature did, and he tried

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Speaker 1: to extract it and weave it. And in fact he

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Speaker 1: took the silk he boiled their cocoons, extracting the threads

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Speaker 1: with combs to make socks and gloves. And then in

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Speaker 1: the early nineteenth century along came Jesuit priest Ramondo Maria Tremor,

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Speaker 1: who discovered that threads extracted from the spider itself produced

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Speaker 1: a higher quality silk. And there's an eighteen oh seven

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Speaker 1: engraving showing his extraction device, and we're looking at it

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Speaker 1: right now. Uh, it kind of looks like a spider guillotine. Yes,

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Speaker 1: it looks a little nefarious, like I'm instantly sympathizing with

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Speaker 1: the spider here, Yeah, because you see that its head

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Speaker 1: is trapped in there in this little half moon device.

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Speaker 1: It's tiny, and it's abdomen is hanging out, and there's

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Speaker 1: a winding machine drawing out a continuous strand from it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: which instantly makes me think of the paintings of the

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Speaker 1: windlass of the Rasmus. The spindle that was used to

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Speaker 1: draw Rasmus is guts out of his body. So it

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Speaker 1: looks very much like a torture instrument. Yes, true, right

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Speaker 1: is very nefarious looking, but it's illustrative of the fact

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Speaker 1: that even with this tiny device, it's incredibly labor intensive.

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Speaker 1: And while we now have the technology to make this

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Speaker 1: an easier process, and we have synthetic materials that try

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Speaker 1: to mimic silk, we humans are still laboring, still pulling

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Speaker 1: at the strings of silk. But now it's not in

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Speaker 1: service of our sartorial desires. It's in service of what

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Speaker 1: we might think of ours, our scientific desires. Yeah. But

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Speaker 1: still a ragney, she doesn't give up her secrets easily.

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Speaker 1: She does not. So in this episode, we're going to

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Speaker 1: talk a bit about what silk is, what spider silk

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Speaker 1: in particular is, and why it's such a stellar um

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Speaker 1: engineering feat, and then we're going to talk about the

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Speaker 1: various ways that that that humans continue to try and

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Speaker 1: grasp that secret of the silk from the spiders, how

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Speaker 1: to how we try to mimic it and all the

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Speaker 1: various uses that we have for it in our modern

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Speaker 1: scientific world. That's right. And it's not just spiders. The

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Speaker 1: silkworms so of course, are a huge fixture in this.

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Speaker 1: That's right because we uh start off by just talking

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Speaker 1: about what silk is, and in defining silk, we really

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Speaker 1: need to start more on the insects side of things,

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Speaker 1: uh than the arachnet. For the most part, silk is

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Speaker 1: a fine, continuous protein fiber produced by various insect larva

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Speaker 1: for cocoons, uh. And it's really only produced by a

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Speaker 1: few groups in the insect world. And we also refer

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Speaker 1: to silk as a bio polymer now. In insects, silk

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Speaker 1: originates as a stored protein liquid and modified saliva glands

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Speaker 1: located in the insect's head. From here it transports via

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Speaker 1: small tubes to the spinneret structure that protrudes beneath the

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Speaker 1: mouth parts on the underside of the head of a

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Speaker 1: given insect. In the case of spiders, however, as we'll discuss,

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Speaker 1: the spinneret is backloaded on the end of the abdomen

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Speaker 1: instead uh And we'll get to the spiders in a bit.

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Speaker 1: But as far as the insects go, the most common

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Speaker 1: use again is cocooning. That's to contain and protect a

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Speaker 1: defenseless pupil stage of the insect or and or to

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Speaker 1: hold it in place on a leaf or a stem,

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Speaker 1: and also some months build tints out of the material

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Speaker 1: as well. Cocoon is spun from a single thread of silk.

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Speaker 1: It might be just pure silk depending on the species,

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Speaker 1: or it might involve bits of soil or leaf litter

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Speaker 1: uh that are caught up in the silk strand as well.

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Speaker 1: So let's look a little closer at the silkworm, which

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Speaker 1: is the larva or caterpillar of the domesticated silk moth

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Speaker 1: called bombyx mori, which is Latin for silkworm of the

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Speaker 1: mulberry tree. In fact, there's a Chinese proverb that says,

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Speaker 1: with time and patients, the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown. Now,

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Speaker 1: the silkworm was once native to China, but now is

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Speaker 1: completely domesticated. One cocoon consists of a single thread that

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Speaker 1: is about one thousand to three thousand feet long, that's

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Speaker 1: three nine hundred meters. And the manipulation of silkworm, the

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Speaker 1: domestication goes back years. And there's a legend that Lei Zu,

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Speaker 1: wife of the Yellow Emperor, was drinking tea when a

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Speaker 1: cocoon fell from a mulberry tree into her steaming cup

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Speaker 1: of tea and began to unravel. Yes, she was amazed

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Speaker 1: by its luminosity and strength, and she gathered more and

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Speaker 1: made silk, and China began to export silk and two

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Speaker 1: hundred b c e so much so that the Silk Road,

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Speaker 1: the famous network of trade routes, was created and stretched

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Speaker 1: from China to the Mediterranean, Africa and Middle East in Europe.

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Speaker 1: And the origin of silk was really closely guarded, right

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Speaker 1: because this is the this is the lifeblood of China

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Speaker 1: at the time. But in five and fifty se some

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Speaker 1: some wily sly monks who had traveled to China brought

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Speaker 1: back silkworm eggs, and the end of the West was

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Speaker 1: forever changed with silk at its disposal. Indeed, now it's

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Speaker 1: rate as insects. Silk is as great as the silkworm.

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Speaker 1: Silk is. None of these guys can really match the

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Speaker 1: arachnids in terms of just pure engineering genius of the thread. Um.

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Speaker 1: I mean, they're just in a class all their own.

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Speaker 1: So the thing about the spiders, as we've alluded to,

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Speaker 1: is that scientists are continuing to study spider silk making

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Speaker 1: and UH and trying to get all the valuable details

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Speaker 1: out of it. And we still have a lot of

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Speaker 1: questions regarding exactly how it all comes together. UM. But

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Speaker 1: here the basics as we understand it. Spiders, like the

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Speaker 1: like insects, um like the silkworms, have a special special

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Speaker 1: glands to secrete silk proteins dissolved in a water based solution.

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Speaker 1: The spider pushes the liquid solution through long ducts, leading

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Speaker 1: to microscopic UH bigots on the spiders spinnerets, and generally

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Speaker 1: there are two or three spinneret pairs located in the

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Speaker 1: rear of the admin. Furthermore, each spigot has a valve

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Speaker 1: that controls the thickness and speed of the extruded material.

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Speaker 1: So already we're seeing like these different layers of complexity

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Speaker 1: that are in play when it comes to just pushing

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Speaker 1: out that that layer of silk. I think it's easy

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Speaker 1: to fall into the trap of thinking of spider silk

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Speaker 1: as kind of like silly string, right, Like there's just

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Speaker 1: a gland, they squeeze it out, and they just squeeze

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Speaker 1: out this thread, and yes, there's some sort of a

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Speaker 1: you know, a hardening of the liquid as it comes out,

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Speaker 1: but we think, well, there's nothing more to that. But

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Speaker 1: really we're talking about a really intense engineering feet just

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Speaker 1: at the the construction of the material itself. As the

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Speaker 1: spigots pull these silk molecules out of the ducks and

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Speaker 1: excrewed them and extrude them into the air, the molecules

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Speaker 1: are stretched out and linked together to form long strands,

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Speaker 1: and then the spinnerettes wind the strands together to form

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Speaker 1: the sturdy silk fiber itself. And this is where it

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Speaker 1: gets even crazier, because most spiders have multiple silk glands

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Speaker 1: in their body, which secrete different types of silk material

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Speaker 1: optimized for different purposes. By winding different silk varieties together

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Speaker 1: in varying proportions, uh, spiders can form a wide range

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Speaker 1: of fiber material. So it's not just one type of

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Speaker 1: ciders a spider silk that's coming out. There are varying

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Speaker 1: spider silks depending on what their purposes. They can vary

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Speaker 1: fiber consistency by adjusting the spigots from smaller to larger strands,

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Speaker 1: and sometimes they'll create a silk strand consisting of an

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Speaker 1: inner core with an outer tube around it. Uh, And

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Speaker 1: they might apply various coatings such as a waterproof coating

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Speaker 1: or a sticky layer, depending on what the use is.

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Speaker 1: So so again, when it comes to spider silk, when

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Speaker 1: they're creating it, that the purpose of the silk is

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Speaker 1: reflected in the actual construction of the silk thread itself,

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Speaker 1: which is amazing, especially if you bump this up against

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Speaker 1: the silkworm and nothing against the silkworm. They're doing a

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Speaker 1: pretty cool job there with making their cocoon, right, But

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Speaker 1: that's sort of like, here's this one thing I can do,

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Speaker 1: whereas a spider is more like its own three D

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Speaker 1: printer exactly. I think that's a fabulous comparison. Yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's varying the type of product that it's creating. And

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Speaker 1: the best way to really examine this is to look

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Speaker 1: at the anatomy of a web, because I remember, above

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Speaker 1: all else, spiders are predators, and so they've come up

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Speaker 1: with this elaborate way to catch their dinners. Now, they

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Speaker 1: will initially just cast a silk line out into the wind,

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Speaker 1: and when it senses that it's caught upon something, it

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Speaker 1: will cinch a starting point and use that connection as

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Speaker 1: a bridge, walking across it as it creates a loose

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Speaker 1: silk hanging from the starting and ending points of this

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Speaker 1: bridge is created, so at that point it pulls pulls

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Speaker 1: down the silk time. It creates a kind of y configuration.

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Speaker 1: It then creates anchor points and structural threads, laying out

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Speaker 1: radius points from the center of the web of the threads.

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Speaker 1: So then you have the various different types of thread

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Speaker 1: being spun. Here, you have a non stick auxiliary spiral

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Speaker 1: that's created as well as a second stick auxiliary one,

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Speaker 1: so the spider has its own smooth path to tread

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Speaker 1: upon while ensuring that the web is good and sticky elsewhere.

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Speaker 1: And there are various I mean, there are tons of

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Speaker 1: different types of webs and dizzying and their complexity. Right,

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Speaker 1: they're beautiful to look at. But one that I wanted

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Speaker 1: to point out is not even functioning as a true web,

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Speaker 1: and this is via trapdoor spiders who use their webs

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Speaker 1: in a really ingenious way. First they dig a tunnel,

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Speaker 1: which they smooth out with a mixture of saliva and earth.

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Speaker 1: Then they fit the opening to the tunnel with a

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Speaker 1: trap door, and it's made out of spider silk, and

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Speaker 1: it can be fitted exactly to the dimensions with a

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Speaker 1: beveled edge like that's craftsmanship, or it can just have

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Speaker 1: a sheet of silk and dirt, and then the top

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Speaker 1: of the trapdoors tricked out with debris so that it

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Speaker 1: easily blends in. So this tunnel gives the spider refuge.

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Speaker 1: It also gives them a place to raise their young

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Speaker 1: end and also in the background, serves as this device

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Speaker 1: to let the spider know that, you know, there's prey around.

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Speaker 1: And it does this that trapdoor by vibrating, and once

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Speaker 1: the spider detects that, it can easily rush out, pull

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Speaker 1: in that prey into its hole and then chomp on it.

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Speaker 1: And it's kind of we were talking about it earlier.

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Speaker 1: I was like, Hey, I'm a little bit I kind

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Speaker 1: of don't want to necessarily put this upon the spiders

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Speaker 1: trapped or spider, but it feels a little bit serial

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Speaker 1: killer to me. Yeah, I mean that that's kind of

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Speaker 1: the vibe of the spider right now. As you mentioned,

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Speaker 1: their various uses for the silk material, various structures that

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Speaker 1: are created by the spiders, and we discussed some of

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Speaker 1: those in our episode It's a Trap, which will include

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Speaker 1: a link to on the landing page for this episode.

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Speaker 1: But these structures are amazing, and the level of engineering

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Speaker 1: is is evident not only in the structure of the

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Speaker 1: that they create out of the webbing, it again in

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Speaker 1: the uh, the minute structure of the strands themselves. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Spider silk is is is particularly great engineering substance because

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Speaker 1: it's incredibly strong, but it's also incredibly flexible. Uh. There's

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Speaker 1: some varieties that are reportedly five times as strong as

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Speaker 1: an equal mass of steel and twice as strong as

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Speaker 1: an equal mass of kevlar. So again, it rivals some

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Speaker 1: of our key tough materials that we as humans wield

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Speaker 1: in the world around us. Now, to understand, you know,

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Speaker 1: why it's so strong, we have to look at the

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Speaker 1: molecular construction of spider silk itself. According to a two

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Speaker 1: thousand eight study from M I. T. The strength lies

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Speaker 1: in the specific geometric configuration of structural proteins, which have

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Speaker 1: small clusters of weak hydrogen bonds that work cooperatively to

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Speaker 1: resist force and dissipate energy. Two twelve University of California

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Speaker 1: Riverside study identified the genes and determine the DNA sequence

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Speaker 1: for two key proteins in the drag line silk of

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Speaker 1: the black widow spider. And and you often see the

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Speaker 1: drag line silk is a focused point UH in the

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Speaker 1: various studies because of the services the bridge, it has

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Speaker 1: to be really strong. So this is the primo material

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Speaker 1: when it comes to spider silk UH. And it turns

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Speaker 1: out the straight drag line silk is a composite material

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Speaker 1: comprised of two different proteins, each containing three regions with

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Speaker 1: distinct properties. So you have an amorphous non crystalline matrix

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Speaker 1: that's stretchable, giving the silk elasticity. And then embedded in

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Speaker 1: the amorphous portions of both proteins are two kinds of

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Speaker 1: crystalline regions that toughen the silk. So the resulting composite

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Speaker 1: is strong, tough, yet elastic. And and again it's it's

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Speaker 1: there and just the minute construction of the thread itself,

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Speaker 1: and we humans see it, we admire it, and we

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Speaker 1: want it. But commercial production of spider silk from spiders

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Speaker 1: is impractical because spiders are jerks right there. They're to

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Speaker 1: cannibalistic and territorial for farming. They're not really jerks, but

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Speaker 1: you know, they're just not ideal for that purpose. Uh

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Speaker 1: And researchers have looked to other organisms, including bacteria, insects, mammals,

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Speaker 1: and plants, But those proteins require mechanical spinning and this

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Speaker 1: is a task that our friend the silkworm performs naturally

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Speaker 1: with those nifty spinneretts. So so what's the researcher to do. Well,

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Speaker 1: let's look at Malcolm Fraser Jr. Who in two thousand

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Speaker 1: and twelve with his team created a hybrid silkworm to

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Speaker 1: do their bidding, one with both silkworm and spider silk proteins,

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Speaker 1: and results showed that taking these two proteins um would

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Speaker 1: result any tougher than typical silkworm silk. It would be

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Speaker 1: as tough as drag line silk um and it would

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Speaker 1: be just the right material that you would want to

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Speaker 1: try to commercially produce. So why would you do this?

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Speaker 1: Why would you mercially produce it um? We'll discuss other

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Speaker 1: instances in which you can use it. But when they

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Speaker 1: were looking at for this purpose, it was for wound dressings,

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Speaker 1: artificial ligments, tendons, tissue scaffolds, micro capsules, cosmetics, and textiles. Okay, Now,

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Speaker 1: while some of you have probably heard of these transgenic

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Speaker 1: silk worms, I bet even more of you remember the

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Speaker 1: transgenic spider goat hybrid, because this really made the rounds,

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Speaker 1: especially back in two thousand two. Uh, instantly bringing to

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Speaker 1: mind and uh and probably to digital reality. Poorly photoshopped

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Speaker 1: images of a goat with like big spider legs coming

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Speaker 1: out of its side, right, was photoshopped? Yeah, because because

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Speaker 1: the real transgenic goat spider hybrid just looks like a goat. Um.

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Speaker 1: This again, it's happening back in two thousand two, researchers

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Speaker 1: at Nexia Biotechnologies genetically modified goats using silk producing genes

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Speaker 1: from spiders, which just a headline level back in two

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Speaker 1: thousand two, it of course instantly sounds Frankensteiny, right, like

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Speaker 1: who are these scientists and why are they trying to

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Speaker 1: make goat spiders? Um. But at this point in the podcast,

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Speaker 1: I think everyone understands what they were going for the

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Speaker 1: idea was that you would have a small number of

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Speaker 1: goats that would be able to produce a large amount

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Speaker 1: of silk material in their milk, which could then be

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Speaker 1: used in various UH then could be utilized for various

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Speaker 1: purposes as we'll discuss. Essentially, they would be the goats

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Speaker 1: will be creating dragline milk. Now, the strands that they

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Speaker 1: produced were only as strong as natural spider silk, but

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Speaker 1: still it's a start, right UH and and at their

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Speaker 1: height next to as Montreal Flock had nearly fifty spider

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Speaker 1: goats total. But the company went bankrupt in two thousand nine,

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Speaker 1: So you had a couple of transgendent goats that went

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Speaker 1: to the Canadian Agricultural Museum, while the rest of them

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Speaker 1: went to Utah State University where they're continue to study

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Speaker 1: them to this day and figure out how we can

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Speaker 1: best utilize a spider goat UM for the for the

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Speaker 1: better men of humanity. Now, that's not the only instance

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Speaker 1: of a company either going bankrupt or just pulling out

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Speaker 1: of the endeavor entirely. And that is because even though

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Speaker 1: you you have UM information being uncovered and you have

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Speaker 1: the transgenic UH, the ability to mess around with this

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Speaker 1: and try to do this in other organisms you still

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Speaker 1: have to understand the relationship between spider silk structure and

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Speaker 1: its function. And again a lot of companies have tried

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Speaker 1: to do this, but it wasn't until researchers from Dalhousie

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Speaker 1: University in Nova Scotia took a closer look at the

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Speaker 1: mechanism and tried to uncover some piece of information that

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Speaker 1: might get them a little bit closer. Now, the first

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Speaker 1: step is that they created artificial spider silk to replicate

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Speaker 1: the proteins that make up the natural version, in this

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Speaker 1: case by recombinantly expressing them in the Bacterium E coli. Now,

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Speaker 1: they looked at the key protein and acid informed silk

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Speaker 1: called a c sp one and they said, okay, it's

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Speaker 1: got three parts. And they said, all right. The protein,

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Speaker 1: most of it is repeated sequences of about two hundred

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Speaker 1: amino acids, and there are two tales called the N

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Speaker 1: and C terminal domains that hang off each end of

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Speaker 1: the protein chain. Now, when they took these proteins and

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Speaker 1: they chained them together, they found that the chains weren't

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Speaker 1: working in unison, but rather as independent units. So that

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Speaker 1: was the first clue of how these are actually working

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Speaker 1: within spiders. And it was the C terminal domain of

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Speaker 1: the protein that was the juncture of the protein that

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Speaker 1: determined the strength of the fiber. So when you're talking

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Speaker 1: about that spider being in the architect and choosing a

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Speaker 1: different type of that type of material, but maybe um

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Speaker 1: consistency or strength, that's the C terminal that is controlling that.

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Speaker 1: And this was a huge breakthrough, right because it peeled

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Speaker 1: away a layer of mystery, and yet there's still so

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Speaker 1: much to be learned in the evolution of spider silk. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because then we what do you do with that data?

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Speaker 1: Then it just leads to six other questions regarding the

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Speaker 1: engineering process that's taking place there. I guess what you

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Speaker 1: knew is you look at it in its in its

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Speaker 1: form right now and say, oh, what can we deal

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Speaker 1: with it? Right? And that's really the the examples we're

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Speaker 1: gonna look to next in the podcast are really looking

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Speaker 1: more at at possible uh ways that we can use

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Speaker 1: the spider silk and the structure of the spider silk

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Speaker 1: and in some cases of the structure of the web itself,

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Speaker 1: how we can mimic that design in various pursuits. According

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Speaker 1: to a two thousand fourteen paper from the University of

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Speaker 1: Akron UH spider silk could be used as an inspiration

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Speaker 1: to create more efficient and stronger commercial and biomedical adhesives

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Speaker 1: that could, for example, potentially attach tendons to bones, bind fractures, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: Anytime you need to bring to shoot together and hold

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Speaker 1: it in place firmly. And and of course one of

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Speaker 1: the advantages here is we'd be using a biosubstance as

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Speaker 1: opposed to something that has to be ejected from the

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Speaker 1: body or taken out at a later date. UH. In particular,

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Speaker 1: with this particular with this study, UH, they were looking

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Speaker 1: at the attachment disks that spiders used to attach their

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Speaker 1: webs to structure. So the spider pins down an underlying

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Speaker 1: thread of silk with additional threads like stitches or staples

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Speaker 1: on top of it. UM. But the real engineering feed

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Speaker 1: here is that the geometry of the attachment disk, the

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Speaker 1: way that they're actually laying down these strands, it creates

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Speaker 1: a super strong attachment force using very little material. So

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Speaker 1: it's you know, a perfect economic model to try and

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Speaker 1: and mimic. So this this particular team led by you

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Speaker 1: a professor of polymer science, Ali Dinawala, utilized electro spinning

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Speaker 1: to mimic the efficient staple pin method. Now, electro spinning

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Speaker 1: is a process by which an electrical charge is used

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Speaker 1: to draw very fine fibers from a liquid. And in

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Speaker 1: the case of this, uh, this particular experiment, they were

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Speaker 1: using polyure thing. Okay, So again, the possible uses here

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Speaker 1: include you know binding, uh, you know, tendons back together, binding,

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Speaker 1: tends to bone, binding, fractures, etcetera. And you'd be using

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Speaker 1: material that can degrade and be reabsorbed by the body.

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Speaker 1: Now that's an example of mending the human body. But

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Speaker 1: spider silk also shows up when you're talking about essentially

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Speaker 1: growing new organs for yourself. And that's because you need

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Speaker 1: when you're talking about growing artificial tissues and organs, you

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Speaker 1: need some kind of structure or substrate for the entity

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Speaker 1: to grow around. And so what could be feather light

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Speaker 1: but formidable enough to provide a framework spiderwebs, of course.

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Speaker 1: So you have a group of researchers led by Professor

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Speaker 1: Constantine A. Glad Say, who heads the Laboratory of Biophysics

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Speaker 1: of Excitable Systems m I p T, and they work

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Speaker 1: specifically on cardiac tissues. Isolate, a protein used in web

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Speaker 1: spinning called spiedroying. What they did is they seated isolated

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Speaker 1: neonatal rat cardiac cells on fiber matrices and during the experiment,

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Speaker 1: the researchers monitored the growth of the cells and they

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Speaker 1: tested their contractability right in their ability to conduct electrical impulses,

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Speaker 1: and these are the main features of normal cardiac tissue.

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Speaker 1: They wanted to see if that could be mimicked in

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Speaker 1: in the protein. And the monitoring, which was carried out

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Speaker 1: with the help of a microscope and fluorescent markers, showed

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Speaker 1: that within three to five days a layer of cells

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Speaker 1: formed on the substrate that we're able to contract synchronously

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Speaker 1: and conduct electrical impulses, just like the tissue of a

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Speaker 1: living heartwood. And this is pretty big news, right. It

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Speaker 1: doesn't mean that we're around the corner from grow your

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Speaker 1: replacement heart clinics um, but it does mean that it's

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Speaker 1: it's a serious step toward me a beating heart out

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Speaker 1: of a few cells, Like that's going to become an

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Speaker 1: eventual reality. And now you found the material. That's just

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Speaker 1: one more in the link to it. It's sounding more

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Speaker 1: and more like the bodies of the future will just

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Speaker 1: be riddled with spider self and I have another example

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Speaker 1: of it here. Uh. I mean, this one really kind

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Speaker 1: of blew me away because the example, if we looked

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Speaker 1: at so far that they're they're based in structure, right,

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Speaker 1: We're looking at the structure of the webbing and how

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Speaker 1: it can be used to make attachments, to to create

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Speaker 1: a structure, to grow tissue over, etcetera. But there were

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Speaker 1: a couple of studies that came out in a two

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Speaker 1: thousand twelve edition of Researchers at Frontiers and Optics, a

427
00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:41,960
Speaker 1: scientific journal. UH looked at two independent teams, one at

428
00:25:42,040 --> 00:25:45,399
Speaker 1: TUF University in Boston at one at c n R.

429
00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:49,040
Speaker 1: S Institute of Physics in France. UH, and they were

430
00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:52,280
Speaker 1: looking at ways that this natural spider silk could be

431
00:25:52,320 --> 00:25:56,920
Speaker 1: used as an eco friendly alternative two traditional methods of

432
00:25:57,040 --> 00:26:02,560
Speaker 1: manipulating light. So we're talking about, um, an alternative to

433
00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:08,640
Speaker 1: glass or plastic fiber optics and lenses. UM. Why would

434
00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:11,840
Speaker 1: you want this again? It comes back to biomedical technology, right,

435
00:26:12,320 --> 00:26:15,639
Speaker 1: the placement of sensors and tags or any kind of

436
00:26:15,960 --> 00:26:20,119
Speaker 1: utilized utilization of light within the human body. UM. I

437
00:26:20,160 --> 00:26:22,600
Speaker 1: mean the revelation for me here that I just did

438
00:26:22,680 --> 00:26:25,280
Speaker 1: not realize was that as it turns out, in addition

439
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:28,800
Speaker 1: to being super sturdy and flexible, silk is a gifted

440
00:26:28,960 --> 00:26:32,160
Speaker 1: light manipulator, and so so light could travel through silk

441
00:26:32,200 --> 00:26:36,639
Speaker 1: almost as easily as it flows through through glass fibers.

442
00:26:37,119 --> 00:26:40,840
Speaker 1: So the potential here hits two key areas. One implanable

443
00:26:40,920 --> 00:26:45,160
Speaker 1: biodegradable optics utilized in sensors and tags that are placed

444
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:47,760
Speaker 1: inside the body. We've talked about the the importance of

445
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:51,880
Speaker 1: real time monitoring um of of our of our body

446
00:26:51,960 --> 00:26:54,879
Speaker 1: and how that is that can play into better management

447
00:26:55,119 --> 00:26:59,359
Speaker 1: of our overall health. And another area is that you

448
00:26:59,400 --> 00:27:02,280
Speaker 1: can take this on biosensors. You can take a pristine

449
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:05,200
Speaker 1: fiber of spider silk and carry light into the body

450
00:27:05,520 --> 00:27:08,880
Speaker 1: through a very small opening um which would be quite

451
00:27:08,960 --> 00:27:14,840
Speaker 1: useful for internal imaging or even chemical diagnosis using spectroscopy,

452
00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:18,320
Speaker 1: which is the analysis of matter based on its interaction

453
00:27:18,440 --> 00:27:21,920
Speaker 1: with light. So yeah, just it's amazing to think of this,

454
00:27:22,040 --> 00:27:24,600
Speaker 1: like this tiny little thread of of of spider silk

455
00:27:25,000 --> 00:27:27,040
Speaker 1: going in through a tiny hole in the body and

456
00:27:27,160 --> 00:27:32,200
Speaker 1: aiding in the in diagnosis. That really, to me is like,

457
00:27:32,640 --> 00:27:35,480
Speaker 1: I think, a game changer and amazing to me that

458
00:27:35,600 --> 00:27:38,760
Speaker 1: the material is being used that way. Yeah, it just again,

459
00:27:38,800 --> 00:27:42,320
Speaker 1: it just it just drives home just how impressive this

460
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:47,920
Speaker 1: material is. Yeah, and again, just to underscore that uh

461
00:27:48,320 --> 00:27:51,760
Speaker 1: impressive durability and strength, let's go back to the spider's

462
00:27:51,840 --> 00:27:54,879
Speaker 1: drag line again. It is the stuff of engineer's streams,

463
00:27:55,359 --> 00:27:58,960
Speaker 1: the tensile strength of a high grade alloy steel, while

464
00:27:59,040 --> 00:28:03,159
Speaker 1: being a sixth as dense and incredibly flexible. You can

465
00:28:03,200 --> 00:28:05,960
Speaker 1: draw it out about five times at some length without

466
00:28:06,080 --> 00:28:10,000
Speaker 1: compromising it. So how do you get a spider to

467
00:28:10,080 --> 00:28:13,359
Speaker 1: do better? How do you ask it to just up

468
00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:16,119
Speaker 1: its game of kevlar strength? Okay, we're still trying to

469
00:28:16,160 --> 00:28:18,480
Speaker 1: actually steal its secrets, but then we're also saying what

470
00:28:18,600 --> 00:28:21,280
Speaker 1: can we do to bump it up? Yeah, we're saying, hey,

471
00:28:21,359 --> 00:28:25,080
Speaker 1: we know you've perfected this over four hundred million years

472
00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:28,440
Speaker 1: of evolution, but do you think right now you could

473
00:28:28,480 --> 00:28:33,480
Speaker 1: do something to increase the durability. Well, of course we're

474
00:28:33,520 --> 00:28:37,640
Speaker 1: talking about here is some researchers. In this case, we're

475
00:28:37,640 --> 00:28:40,920
Speaker 1: talking about Nicola Puno at the University of Trento in

476
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:44,920
Speaker 1: Italy and his team who took some seller spiders who

477
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:48,480
Speaker 1: are also known as fulsit I and the site spider

478
00:28:48,560 --> 00:28:51,280
Speaker 1: Hugger dot com by the way, describes these spiders as

479
00:28:51,360 --> 00:28:54,360
Speaker 1: quote looking like something made out of many marshmallows of

480
00:28:54,440 --> 00:28:59,040
Speaker 1: pipe cleaners. So the research took these seller spiders and

481
00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:03,960
Speaker 1: they douse the spiders with either water containing carbon nanotubes

482
00:29:04,120 --> 00:29:07,240
Speaker 1: or graphine flakes. Now two materials that are both really

483
00:29:07,320 --> 00:29:10,520
Speaker 1: really strong, right, So this is an attempt to sort

484
00:29:10,560 --> 00:29:15,560
Speaker 1: of to supersize the strength of the of the spider

485
00:29:15,640 --> 00:29:17,840
Speaker 1: and sort of make it into it's a little spider superhero.

486
00:29:18,880 --> 00:29:21,680
Speaker 1: They checked out the spider's handiwork after they did this

487
00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:24,320
Speaker 1: for each strand of silk, and they fixed the fiber

488
00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:28,160
Speaker 1: between two C shaped cardboard holders and placed it in

489
00:29:28,200 --> 00:29:30,960
Speaker 1: a device that can measure the load on a fiber

490
00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:35,240
Speaker 1: with a resolution of fifteen nanomutants in any fiber displacement

491
00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:38,560
Speaker 1: with a resolution of a point one nanometers. Okay, So,

492
00:29:39,000 --> 00:29:40,880
Speaker 1: in other words, are very serious about the tin sile

493
00:29:40,920 --> 00:29:44,480
Speaker 1: strength here, and Pina wrote that the thread is the

494
00:29:44,600 --> 00:29:49,440
Speaker 1: highest toughness modulus for a fiber, surpassing synthetic polymeric high

495
00:29:49,520 --> 00:29:53,760
Speaker 1: performance fibers like Kevlar forty nine and even the current

496
00:29:53,840 --> 00:29:58,920
Speaker 1: toughest knotted fibers. So it was amazing about that is

497
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:02,840
Speaker 1: not only it was the thread tougher than before, right,

498
00:30:02,960 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 1: tougher than kevlar, tougher than its own natural tensile strength.

499
00:30:08,240 --> 00:30:12,600
Speaker 1: But they could find the actual carbon nanitubes in it.

500
00:30:13,400 --> 00:30:16,000
Speaker 1: They just weren't sure of how it was happening. At first.

501
00:30:16,040 --> 00:30:18,480
Speaker 1: They thought, well, maybe they were taking it and spreading

502
00:30:18,520 --> 00:30:22,200
Speaker 1: it onto the spider silk after it came out of them,

503
00:30:22,600 --> 00:30:25,040
Speaker 1: but that was discounted. They're just not sure how it

504
00:30:25,120 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 1: was incorporated into their bodies to create it. So again

505
00:30:29,120 --> 00:30:31,720
Speaker 1: we find out a little more about the mystery of

506
00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:34,120
Speaker 1: spider silk, and we just end up with more questions.

507
00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:38,760
Speaker 1: It is the great mystery. Well you know, um, we

508
00:30:38,840 --> 00:30:41,600
Speaker 1: have one more study to to mention here, and and

509
00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:45,880
Speaker 1: this one we feel really really drives home the elegance

510
00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:48,360
Speaker 1: of the design that we see here again not only

511
00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:51,320
Speaker 1: in the structure that they build, but the but the

512
00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:55,240
Speaker 1: material that they build in the varying take some material

513
00:30:55,320 --> 00:31:00,200
Speaker 1: they build to construct it. The comparison here spy eighter

514
00:31:00,280 --> 00:31:04,600
Speaker 1: silk and music spidered web and U and you know,

515
00:31:04,720 --> 00:31:09,760
Speaker 1: a classically arranged piece of music. Um. In particularly, we're

516
00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:13,480
Speaker 1: looking at a study from two thousand eleven researches at M. I. T.

517
00:31:14,280 --> 00:31:18,760
Speaker 1: They created a scientifically rigorous analogy that shows the similarities

518
00:31:18,800 --> 00:31:22,320
Speaker 1: between the physical structure structure of spider silk and the

519
00:31:22,520 --> 00:31:27,200
Speaker 1: sonic structure of a melody. Um and taking it down,

520
00:31:27,280 --> 00:31:30,560
Speaker 1: just stripping it down to the building blocks of either

521
00:31:31,440 --> 00:31:33,760
Speaker 1: an amino acid in the case of the webbing, and

522
00:31:33,840 --> 00:31:36,960
Speaker 1: a sound wave in the case of the music. Yeah.

523
00:31:37,040 --> 00:31:40,040
Speaker 1: And it's got many different layers of sound in music

524
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:42,960
Speaker 1: to it in this analogy, and the study explains that

525
00:31:43,160 --> 00:31:47,120
Speaker 1: structural patterns are directly related to the functional properties. That's

526
00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:50,280
Speaker 1: one layer of lightweight strength in the spider silk and

527
00:31:50,600 --> 00:31:54,240
Speaker 1: in the riff sonic tension that creates an emotional response

528
00:31:54,400 --> 00:31:58,959
Speaker 1: in the listener. It's interesting to think of actually melody

529
00:31:59,160 --> 00:32:02,000
Speaker 1: music is spider webs, right, and the tension that's held

530
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:05,280
Speaker 1: within them and the structures, the repeating patterns. Yeah, it

531
00:32:05,400 --> 00:32:07,640
Speaker 1: just again it drives home just the elegance of the

532
00:32:07,720 --> 00:32:14,640
Speaker 1: design and just how how nuanced it is. Um. I

533
00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:16,760
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm going to start thinking of music

534
00:32:16,840 --> 00:32:20,680
Speaker 1: I like as a spider web exactly, but but but

535
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:23,520
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a wonderful analogy that they make and

536
00:32:23,880 --> 00:32:27,920
Speaker 1: back up with data. Yeah, it's another way to look

537
00:32:28,080 --> 00:32:33,520
Speaker 1: at um, not Fibonacci, but symmetry and nature and the

538
00:32:33,680 --> 00:32:38,680
Speaker 1: patterns held within and only that uh, the communication, right,

539
00:32:38,680 --> 00:32:41,760
Speaker 1: because if you think about the spider web and the

540
00:32:41,880 --> 00:32:45,200
Speaker 1: vibrations that it's giving off, that perhaps is a kind

541
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:48,640
Speaker 1: of melody to the spider itself telling it something about

542
00:32:48,640 --> 00:32:52,560
Speaker 1: the pacing, something about the beat of the thing that's

543
00:32:52,640 --> 00:32:56,600
Speaker 1: making it vibrate. Yeah, the sweet sweet music of of

544
00:32:56,800 --> 00:32:59,200
Speaker 1: of a creature in agony wrapped up in your web

545
00:32:59,280 --> 00:33:02,120
Speaker 1: that you could take. I'll go and uh and wrap

546
00:33:02,240 --> 00:33:05,880
Speaker 1: up some more and drain the life force from that exactly.

547
00:33:06,080 --> 00:33:10,080
Speaker 1: That's the song of the spider right there, all right.

548
00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:13,360
Speaker 1: So there you have it, uh, spider silk. I hope

549
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:16,240
Speaker 1: that uh, I hope that that that you guys and

550
00:33:16,320 --> 00:33:19,400
Speaker 1: guys listening have more respect now for the spider and

551
00:33:19,440 --> 00:33:21,880
Speaker 1: what it's doing. It's not just a silly string coming

552
00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:24,880
Speaker 1: out of a spiders but it's uh, and it's not

553
00:33:25,280 --> 00:33:27,480
Speaker 1: you know, spiderweb itself is not on par with just

554
00:33:27,640 --> 00:33:30,360
Speaker 1: you know, doing some cat's cradle stuff with some string

555
00:33:30,440 --> 00:33:34,080
Speaker 1: and your fingers. That it's an engineering marvel at every level.

556
00:33:35,320 --> 00:33:37,400
Speaker 1: If you would like to learn more about this topic

557
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:39,120
Speaker 1: and others, that'll be sure to head on over stuff

558
00:33:39,120 --> 00:33:41,160
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. There's where you'll find

559
00:33:41,400 --> 00:33:45,280
Speaker 1: uh podcast videos, blog post links out of social media accounts,

560
00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:47,440
Speaker 1: and we'll make sure that we have stuff on the

561
00:33:47,560 --> 00:33:50,520
Speaker 1: landing page linking out to some wonderful resources, including the

562
00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:53,200
Speaker 1: how spiders Work article on how stuff works dot com,

563
00:33:53,280 --> 00:33:58,040
Speaker 1: which gives you a wonderful overview of spider anatomy. If

564
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:01,720
Speaker 1: you have thoughts about the culture or residents of silkworms

565
00:34:01,800 --> 00:34:05,600
Speaker 1: in China, or if you have thoughts about spider webs

566
00:34:05,800 --> 00:34:09,480
Speaker 1: and silk used in biomedicine, particularly in your own body,

567
00:34:10,040 --> 00:34:13,560
Speaker 1: or even what we're talking about with melodies and the

568
00:34:13,680 --> 00:34:17,279
Speaker 1: patterns of spider webs, please do share those thoughts with us.

569
00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:19,480
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you, and you can email

570
00:34:19,560 --> 00:34:22,359
Speaker 1: us at blow the Mind House to works dot com

571
00:34:25,680 --> 00:34:28,080
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is

572
00:34:28,120 --> 00:34:29,359
Speaker 1: it how staff works dot com