Moon Parka: Outerwear Made from Synthetic Spider Silk

Another company, Bolt Threads [1] just raised significant money [2] to produce spider silk as well. Started by a few molecular biologists, they too took it from a protein sequence, into yeast, purified the protein in bulk, spun it into thread, then wove it into a fabric. Which means, theoretically they can tweak the protein sequence to produce an entirely new fabric in a matter of a few weeks. Once you get a woven protein scaffold into a fabric, systematically modifying the scaffold further is relatively easy for a protein compared with the sugars and polymers we use currently.

It's hard to see unless you look closely, but this is the beginning of biological nanotechnology. These are some of the very first deliberately designed biological molecules to make it into a non-pharmaceutical market. Technologically, the silks in these fabrics are made of designed components an order of magnitude smaller than Intel's best transistors. And (under biological conditions) are significantly more functionally versatile.

[1] https://boltthreads.com/ [2] http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/04/spiderpants/

I saw a talk a few years ago by a German company that was essentially trying to do the same thing. I forgot the name of the company, but I remembered they said that expressing the proteins is the easy part. Spinning the proteins into a thread was the tough part. Apparently spiders have special excretion structures/organs that can anneal the proteins to the right conformation extremely quickly as they are ejected. This is why a spider can basically just jump off of anything and shoot out his "bungee cord" while falling which is incredibly fast if you think about it. When the researchers tried to replicate this by simply shooting the concentrated protein solution through a tiny capillary they weren't able to achieve the same molecular structure for their thread nor at the same speed. They noted that their thread was strong, but nevertheless significantly weaker than a spider's. I'm very interested to know if these other companies managed to overcome these challenges and how exactly.

Sigh, I wish web sites had more information, this from the manufacturer https://www.spiber.jp/en/endeavor?section=3

I'm curious to know what the tensile strength and Young's modulus is for the thread. I get annoyed that the "stronger than steel" moniker when it discusses one aspect of strength and generally related to weight but not volume. Its much less impressive to have a .050 fiber that is "stronger than steel" when the equivalent steel fiber would be .0005.

Interesting questions like "How does it compare to Kevlar(tm)?" are we going to see sails made out of it? What is the durability in the presence of ultraviolet light (aka sunlight)? Is this just a Velben[1] fiber, suitable only for showing off just how much you can spend on a jacket?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorstein_Veblen

Interesting, confused as to why weather wear is where it ended up? It doesn't seem to talk much about insulation or any of the keep warm themes just general strength.

Wow, just recently I was looking up all about spider silk, thinking we weren't utilizing it to its full potential - whether medical, military or even fashion. Very excited about this, though it will probably be extremely expensive.

I remember seeing a video as a kid of a spider silk blanket flattening a bullet shot at it. Is this parka as puncture resistant?

Spider silk is extremely vulnerable to flame though... I'm not sure if that is mostly related to just how thin it is... But I would like to see a comparison between this fabric and nylon when near open flame. Nylon will melt, what will this do?

How much will it cost? I didn't see a price, but I know it will be high...

Has anyone found any objective information about the actual properties of Qmonos?

I love it when promises of sci-fi from my youth become real.

I'm assuming it's not sticky, otherwise you'd be covered in flies as you walked around.