A Bay Area Startup Spins Lab-Grown Silk | Hacker News Reader

A Bay Area Startup Spins Lab-Grown Silk

bloomberg.com

39 pointsmnemonik13 comments

Yet another bonus of genetic engineering.

Just waiting for the first protesters decrying FrankenCloth and carrying pictures of giant spiders ;<).

https://coconutcreamcare.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/frknfoo...

Genetic engineering of microorganisms carefully maintained in bioreactors and probably not competitive with their wild variants is not quite the same as letting them grow on fields.

While one shouldn't categorically deny manipulation of crops at least the risk assessment should be more stringent than for lab-grown yeast.

The fun thing is this is a designed fabric. There are very few other designed materials designed in this way. Kevlar, nylon and those such things come to mind as designed from chemistry up - miracles of the chemistry of the '50s & 60s. This is different in that the design is done using a much more standardized and modifiable plan - genetics.

A huge difference, is these fabrics are protein based, and as such, can have productive & useful variants made simply by changing the genetic code from which they were produced; monumentally easier than researching nylon into kevlar, chemically.

This is an entirely different R&D schedule. And the bounds are what can be found in nature. It's not so much that they can produce spider silk, but that they can relatively intelligently direct their efforts to produce spider silk that also does <insert biological property here>.

Yet another bonus of genetic engineering.

Just waiting for the first protesters decrying FrankenCloth and carrying pictures of giant spiders ;<).

Sounds cool and everything, but this is one of those perpetually five-years-off technologies.

Someone needs to do it first

Sure. It's just that until and unless they have a manufacturing process that can produce at least, I don't know, hundreds of actual products a week, we should be a little skeptical that they'll succeed where lots of people have failed.

If the timeline of a technology looks like:

-----------------------------------+++++++++++>

Where the -'s are failures and the +'s are successes, then there are a lot more points that aren't the first plus than that are.

Except the '+' goes on forever once it's figured out, whereas the '-' is only limitless if the technology is impossible.

"Bolt is working with manufacturing partners such as the Michigan Biotechnology Institute in Lansing, which will do larger-scale fermentation in 4,000-liter tanks using Bolt’s process, and Unifi, a yarn manufacturer based in Greensboro, N.C., which will spin Bolt’s fibers into apparel-ready yarn and textiles."

From the article it seems like they're already partnering with established firms to scale up their process. So I doubt this is "perpetually five-years-off" if they have already have partners on board implementing their process.

If the future tense in those sentences were present tense, I'd be much more excited. If they were predicting that they'd have products in 3 months, or even 6 months, instead of 18-24 months, I'd be much more excited.

Lots of seemingly-promising materials technology falls down when people actually try to industrialize the manufacturing process. I don't see much sign from that article that they've actually overcome those hurdles. And those are the hurdles here -- we've been able to produce spider silk in small quantities since forever.

Maybe Bolt will do it! Someone will, eventually. But I just don't see any reason why this article couldn't have been written in 1995, which makes me wonder if in 2035, someone will write a functionally identical article, and some future skeptic will say, "I don't see why this article couldn't have been written in 2015."

Totally agreed. While this article isn't completely clear on whether complete fabrics have yet been produced, the nature of the relationships these guys are forming with other companies certainly seems to imply that they have some semi-viable or completely viable materials already produced. A year or more before they have a product to market doesn't mean it will be that long until they have perfected the process, but rather that is how long until they hop through the numerous hoops involved with contracts, branding, marketing, and distribution. And the founders are spot on - these sorts of things always start as expensive, small batch items. It doesn't mean it's not able to be scaled, just that it hasn't been yet.

Also, there is actually already a precedent for clothing being "grown" with bacteria, including specifically yeast (http://www.dezeen.com/2014/02/12/movie-biocouture-microbes-c...). Seems to me that the unique thing in this instance is the nature of the finished material - they were initially being funded by the military so these fabrics may be more "high performance" than their current yeast-grown counterparts. Either way given that there are multiple efforts to take these products to market I would not say that it is a pipe dream to commercialize on a large scale.

> they were initially being funded by the military so these fabrics may be more "high performance"

This isn't genuine spider silk though, if it had comparable performance they would certainly state so in interviews. The military probably is interested in "kevlar or better", which spider silk itself promises but has so far proved to be elusive.

Competing with regular clothing fiber such as cotton is a lower bar.

That's the polar-opposite negative stance to "Why does everyone work on crud chat apps."

Almost all technical advances that are (truly) 5 years hence have been predicted for decades -- and suffered from similar dismissals. Kudos to the founders for having the gumption to push forward.

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