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Speaker 2: Oh hey, it's that bottle of mustard you don't even
Speaker 2: remember buying, but you've moved with twice now Ali ward
Speaker 2: back with another episode homologies. Okay, I just want to say,
Speaker 2: if you're listening you're not a huge fan of spiders,
Speaker 2: I want to tell you that you're brave. I'm proud
Speaker 2: of you. And spoiler alert, this is not scary at all.
Speaker 2: We barely even talk about spiders themselves, but rather we
Speaker 2: just kind of focus on things that come out of
Speaker 2: their rears. So for anyone in your life who's a spiderfobe,
Speaker 2: just gently maybe send them this episode, tell them it's
Speaker 2: a great way to admire the gritters and there are
Speaker 2: very few goosebumps in the road ahead. So one day
Speaker 2: we're going to work up to arachnology. We're going to
Speaker 2: talk about the animals themselves one day. But today is
Speaker 2: not that day, my friends. So today we're just walking
Speaker 2: into spiderwebs. But before that, a quick detour into thank
Speaker 2: You Shyer. So thank you to everyone supporting the show
Speaker 2: on Patreon. You submit questions for the ologists each week.
Speaker 2: A dollar a month gets you in that club. Just
Speaker 2: go to patreon dot com slash ologies and it lets
Speaker 2: me pay my editors well and donate to four or
Speaker 2: five charities each month while still getting to be choosy
Speaker 2: about who sponsors a show. So thanks to everyone also
Speaker 2: wearing ologies merch from Ologiesmarch dot com. Thanks to everyone
Speaker 2: who has made sure that you're subscribed, especially with the
Speaker 2: recent iOS updates, so check and make sure that you're
Speaker 2: subscribed and it's auto downloading the fresh ones. And thank
Speaker 2: you to everyone who rates the podcast to keep it
Speaker 2: up in the charts, and of course those of you
Speaker 2: who reviews for me to creep with teary eyes such as,
Speaker 2: for example mstan ninety six, who is applying to grad
Speaker 2: school and says, thanks, Dad, that's me for combating imposter
Speaker 2: syndrome by sharing the human side of science, and for
Speaker 2: always supporting all of your blood children's dreams. Well, thank you,
Speaker 2: mstan ninety six. I look forward to calling you doctor,
Speaker 2: mstan ninety six. Okay, spidronology, What in the dark, shadowy
Speaker 2: night is that? So, unless you are a spider doctor,
Speaker 2: you probably did not know that there is a word
Speaker 2: for spider webs, and it's spid droins. Well, spiddrowins are
Speaker 2: the main proteins in spider silk, and they're as strong
Speaker 2: as steel, but they're more flexible and they're similar to
Speaker 2: collagen or carrotin. We're gonna get into it, So, yes, kiddos,
Speaker 2: this is a whole episode unraveling the mysteries and looking
Speaker 2: into the future of spider silk. What it is, how
Speaker 2: it works, how it may change all of our lives.
Speaker 2: So I met this ologist when I went to Utah
Speaker 2: State University to film a segment in his lab for
Speaker 2: Innovation Nation, which is my wonderful dream job slash day
Speaker 2: job as a correspondent for CBS for them Saturday mornings.
Speaker 2: Check your local listings, along with my other own show
Speaker 2: on the CWO did I Mention Invention? Did I mention
Speaker 2: that I have a show called did I Mention Invention? Okay,
Speaker 2: so you can find those on weekends CWCBS. Anyway, it
Speaker 2: was a very beautiful April afternoon, and after we finished
Speaker 2: filming his segment, I coerced him into sitting down for
Speaker 2: a podcast chat. And he is a world famous pioneer
Speaker 2: in spider silk, So stick around to get a lifetime's
Speaker 2: worth of appreciation and context about what a spider web is,
Speaker 2: what is made of, how strong a single thread can be,
Speaker 2: how it's synthesized, and labs future medical uses, some superhero flimplam,
Speaker 2: transgenic goats, gene splicing bow ties, the most beautiful thing
Speaker 2: I have ever seen, and what too much coffee does
Speaker 2: to spider brains with Utah State Biology Professor and your
Speaker 2: new favorite spidronologist, doctor Randy Lewis. Cool beans, So if
Speaker 2: you could tell me your first and last name and
Speaker 2: how you pronounce it, Randy Lewis, doctor Randy Lewis, doctor
Speaker 2: Randy Lewis, And if you are an ologist of any sort,
Speaker 2: what do you think you would be.
Speaker 3: Probably a biomterial ologist, okay.
Speaker 2: Or you deal with spirous.
Speaker 3: Spidern It could be a spidern ologist, but most people
Speaker 3: would know what that was, So biomterials might be a
Speaker 3: broader thing for people to know what I really am.
Speaker 2: Well, they're about to know what a spidronologist is. True enough,
Speaker 2: true enough of the people in the world who work
Speaker 2: with spider silk, is it a small group? It's a
Speaker 2: relatively small group.
Speaker 3: Would say that the entire publication record probably involves no
Speaker 3: more than thirty labs. There might be a few more
Speaker 3: than that, and of those probably only twenty of them
Speaker 3: have ever published more than one paper.
Speaker 2: How many papers have you published?
Speaker 3: My total is like one hundred and fifty, and on
Speaker 3: spider silk we're probably talking seventy.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. What about patents?
Speaker 3: So we have eleven patents right now and we have
Speaker 3: three that are pending.
Speaker 2: Or so, how long have you been in the spider
Speaker 2: silk spidery on game?
Speaker 3: Yeah, just cause spider silk works because nobody uses uses
Speaker 3: the spidron term that we came up with to describe
Speaker 3: the proteins.
Speaker 2: I keep wanting to say spidreon, but it's spiddrowing like
Speaker 2: it rhymes with groin, which is I guess where the
Speaker 2: silk comes from on your body if you're a spider.
Speaker 3: I believe I should be considered the father of spider silk,
Speaker 3: at least at the molecular level, although I've now passed
Speaker 3: enough generations that some are calling me the grandfather of it.
Speaker 2: My grandfa.
Speaker 3: But we cloned the first spider silk Jeane, thirty years ago,
Speaker 3: this coming.
Speaker 2: Summer thirty years ago, this coming summer thirty years Can
Speaker 2: you remember the date? No, I don't. You gotta have
Speaker 2: a cake or something. Get a sheet cake from Costco.
Speaker 2: That's probably true.
Speaker 3: We probably got to celebrate somehow, at least, so ice
Speaker 3: cream cake from the ice cream store probably better for
Speaker 3: my group anyway.
Speaker 2: So get a carvel, you deserve it. Sorry, we don't
Speaker 2: have them around here for so. Now, tell me a
Speaker 2: little bit about your backstory before we go into how
Speaker 2: you started cloning the proteins of spider silk. What was
Speaker 2: your backstory?
Speaker 3: So? I was born and raised in northern Wyoming. I
Speaker 3: went to cal Tech as an undergrad. I'm a two
Speaker 3: time inductee into the Caltech Athletic Hall of Fame really
Speaker 3: because I was the captain of the first wrestling team
Speaker 3: ever to win a conference championship, and we actually won
Speaker 3: three in a row.
Speaker 2: I don't even know that they had a wrestling team.
Speaker 3: Well they don't anymore, Okay, they did then. Okay, so
Speaker 3: there are no academic marks for my history at Caltech, but.
Speaker 2: There are wrestling marks.
Speaker 3: So so you know, go to a brain school and
Speaker 3: be a non brain is the way to go. I
Speaker 3: then went to grad school at UC San Diego, did
Speaker 3: a postdoc at the Rosia Institute.
Speaker 2: So Randy did his undergrad in chemistry and his master's
Speaker 2: and PhD in biokem then did postdoc in molecular biology.
Speaker 2: So notice zero of those degrees were in entomology or arachnology.
Speaker 2: So how did he get all tangled up in these
Speaker 2: spider webs?
Speaker 3: Got started on the spider silk sort of of as
Speaker 3: a as a side light, and they became the dominant
Speaker 3: thing that we did in the lab.
Speaker 2: Your side hustle took over.
Speaker 3: It's true, absolutely true.
Speaker 2: Did you have a thing for spiders before that? Or
Speaker 2: I don't think that I had a thing for him.
Speaker 3: I think that I recognized spiders as being interesting organized,
Speaker 3: and knew some about them, but clearly not nearly as
Speaker 3: much as I've learned since then, you know, to appreciate
Speaker 3: just what an amazing organism they are.
Speaker 2: And so where did you start in the field. What
Speaker 2: was your first intro into spider silk?
Speaker 3: So I was I was working with a company out
Speaker 3: in California, a small biotech company, and they had developed
Speaker 3: technique for a vaccine, so what they were wanting to
Speaker 3: do was to make silkworm silk, and it became clear
Speaker 3: that economically that never made any sense, so they asked
Speaker 3: me to look at spider silk and I did, and
Speaker 3: at the time there was a lot of known about
Speaker 3: the biology, but absolutely nothing about the actual fibers themselves,
Speaker 3: except that they were made out of protein, and proteins
Speaker 3: were what my lab was good at. So they decided
Speaker 3: that it was too long term a project, which turns
Speaker 3: out to be true, obviously, because thirty years later we
Speaker 3: still really don't have any products out there. So as
Speaker 3: a biotech company, you know, you'd got belly up a
Speaker 3: long time ago. So I was able to talk to
Speaker 3: the office in Naval Research, which they had contacted about
Speaker 3: their vaccine stuff and produced a fairly small little proposal
Speaker 3: to them to see if we couldn't clone the gene
Speaker 3: for protein that made up one of the spider silks,
Speaker 3: and I ended up getting the grant. But it's interesting
Speaker 3: because it got two reviews from the outside, one of
Speaker 3: which said this was the best thing they could could be,
Speaker 3: the best thing since slice bread. The other one said,
Speaker 3: this is the stupidest idea I ever heard of. And
Speaker 3: fortunately the program officer chose to take the first one
Speaker 3: and give me money. Fortunately, when in the first year
Speaker 3: we were able to clone and sequence the very first
Speaker 3: spider silk gene in the first year. First year, we
Speaker 3: got it done before a year was up.
Speaker 2: So man, I've been meaning to reorganize my kitchen cabinets
Speaker 2: for at least two years, and you cloned a gene
Speaker 2: in a year. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, at a certain stage, it's the people. It's the
Speaker 3: people you have. It's not you that accomplished something. And
Speaker 3: I'm at the stage where, you know, I know how
Speaker 3: to solve problems, but I don't know how to do
Speaker 3: most of the things in the lab anymore.
Speaker 2: Okay, before we get to into how how this golden
Speaker 2: fleece unicorn hair, heavn tinsel unobtainium is obtained. Let's get
Speaker 2: down to some brassy tacks. Walk me through a little
Speaker 2: bit about what is spider silk, because I know enough
Speaker 2: about a spider butt to know that different things comes
Speaker 2: out of their silk glands. Yes, what's going on?
Speaker 3: So the spiders that we work with make six different
Speaker 3: kinds of silk and a gloom. They're the ones that
Speaker 3: make the typical round web. It's called an orb web
Speaker 3: that most people think about that spiders make.
Speaker 2: Okay, side note, if you're wondering what invisible force has
Speaker 2: captured your face, what gossamer thready creation has veiled you
Speaker 2: at night? Those are likely the work of orb weaver spiders.
Speaker 2: They are architects and artisans. They are craft spiders. Their
Speaker 2: talent is innate, and their spiral spider webs are just iconic. Now,
Speaker 2: some like the Nephela golden orb weavers spin this brilliant
Speaker 2: yellow silk. It just it's like threads of gold. So
Speaker 2: what's up with cobwebs? Well, spider web tends to mean
Speaker 2: one that is still inhabited, and cobwebs refer to old,
Speaker 2: abandoned ones. So once they get dusty, they tend to
Speaker 2: lose their tack. But a cobweb is also a type
Speaker 2: of web, one that's less of a two planed spiral
Speaker 2: net more of a three dimensional maze. We'll get into
Speaker 2: that in a bit.
Speaker 3: And they use the silks for very different purposes and
Speaker 3: they have very different mechanical properties. So you know, evolutionarily,
Speaker 3: you sort of have a lot of evolutionary tinkering that
Speaker 3: went on before we ever got to take a look
Speaker 3: at it. So basically, in most of the glands, there's
Speaker 3: a couple of them that they don't produce silk all
Speaker 3: the time, but generally they produce silk, put it in
Speaker 3: a gland. They have it in a form that's still
Speaker 3: not completely identified, but we think they're sort of very
Speaker 3: small little balls of protein that are present in there.
Speaker 3: And my cells, but protein my cells as opposed to
Speaker 3: membring my cells, which is what most people think about.
Speaker 2: When he says my cells, he's not talking about his
Speaker 2: own cells, but rather little gatherings of proteins hanging out
Speaker 2: in a huddle that are called my cells.
Speaker 3: Then when they pull the silk out, so they pull
Speaker 3: it out like flaws. They don't squeeze it out like toothpaste. Okay,
Speaker 3: so all of the silks have.
Speaker 2: To be pulled out.
Speaker 3: And when they pull that the silk at the very
Speaker 3: end of a tube going down from the gland that
Speaker 3: they make it to the outside, all the silk then
Speaker 3: behind it starts to get pulled out because it's very viscous.
Speaker 3: On the trip down that tube, the sheer forces cause
Speaker 3: the protein molecules to basically line up, like you can
Speaker 3: imagine if you were to take spaghetti start getting it
Speaker 3: down through a funnel, all the spaghetti molecule the spaghetti
Speaker 3: has to line up where it doesn't go down. So
Speaker 3: that's what's happening in this trip down there. When they
Speaker 3: do that, they actually protein molecules lock together and become
Speaker 3: in soluble and that's how the fiber forms. Amazingly enough,
Speaker 3: it can happen in as little as ten milliseconds. So
Speaker 3: if you see a spider fall, that silk is solidifying
Speaker 3: in milliseconds as it comes out of the spider.
Speaker 2: And do they use a combination of their spinnerets or
Speaker 2: their legs or gravity what gives it that force?
Speaker 3: All of the above, so they can't squeeze it out,
Speaker 3: so they either have to pull it out with their leg.
Speaker 3: The other thing they can do is attach it to
Speaker 3: something and walk away from it. Okay, So the silk
Speaker 3: that most people are interested in called dragline silk, and
Speaker 3: it's dragline because when they walk away, they drag it
Speaker 3: behind them. So if you see a spider crawling across
Speaker 3: the ceiling, for instance, if you watch it, it'll crawl
Speaker 3: for a little ways and then it'll start wiggling its butt.
Speaker 2: We can't stop talking about it when it does that.
Speaker 3: It's using another silk to attach the major silk to
Speaker 3: some kind of a protrusion on the wall.
Speaker 2: So just like a climber.
Speaker 3: You know, if a climber climbs so far and they
Speaker 3: put a piton or a hook or something in there,
Speaker 3: it's exactly what spiders have been doing for four hundred
Speaker 3: million years. So rock climbers are a little behind on
Speaker 3: the death. And in addition, they can stick the silk
Speaker 3: to almost anything. Now they have trouble with something like teflon,
Speaker 3: but they can stick it to glass wonderfully. So you know,
Speaker 3: you put them in a glass aquarium, for instance, or
Speaker 3: a plexiglass aquarium, and you can see them. You can
Speaker 3: see the little attachments where they put all their silk down.
Speaker 3: That is how they produce the silk and have to
Speaker 3: pull it out.
Speaker 2: And what are some other types of silk because you
Speaker 2: said six, so that's the.
Speaker 3: So they have dragline silk that's the framework of the
Speaker 3: web and they use.
Speaker 2: It for their protective line.
Speaker 3: There's a minor ampulet silk that they use that's mostly
Speaker 3: for reinforcing of the web. There is a tubuliform silk
Speaker 3: and that's almost crystalline, so that the silk is relatively strong,
Speaker 3: but if you try to bend it, it'll break easily.
Speaker 3: They use it for an outer coating when they lay
Speaker 3: their eggs. Oh, there's aciniform silk that they used to
Speaker 3: both wrap their prey and wrap their eggs, so that's
Speaker 3: the inside case of an egg layer. They have aggregate silk,
Speaker 3: which is the silk and is the glue in there.
Speaker 3: Puriform is the attachment, so they use that to attach
Speaker 3: their silks down. And then there's flagelli form silk critically
Speaker 3: important because that's most of the spiral in the web
Speaker 3: and that's what they use to catch their prey with.
Speaker 3: So it's very stretchy, so basically insect hits It just
Speaker 3: stretches the silk out until all the energy is absorbed
Speaker 3: and then it gets stuck in the glue.
Speaker 2: So it's a silk well not so much. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: was not right about that. So the key is you
Speaker 2: don't want to trampoline. Okay.
Speaker 3: So what happens is it absorbs that energy and then
Speaker 3: radiates it back of heat. So if you look at it, it
Speaker 3: hits the web. So the web doing this, the web
Speaker 3: comes back very slowly and loses like seventy five percent
Speaker 3: of all that energy as heat on that retraction back
Speaker 3: up very slowly.
Speaker 2: Wow. So it doesn't just take the prey and then
Speaker 2: shoot the prey. That would not be very efficient.
Speaker 3: You know, it looked, but it would not do the
Speaker 3: spy you know, for the spider's lifetime. Would not be
Speaker 3: very efficient. So you'd lose a lot of your prey.
Speaker 2: Okay, so real quick, they've got major ambulate or dragline
Speaker 2: silk one that is just super strong. It's as strong
Speaker 2: as steel, but it's tougher and it acts as those
Speaker 2: webs spokes and the non sticky outer rim. And then
Speaker 2: there's minor ampulate, which is temporary kind of like a
Speaker 2: sketch while they're building the web. Then they have flagelliform
Speaker 2: sticky silk for the inside spiral of the web, that
Speaker 2: little bullseye super sticky, and then to biliform silk is
Speaker 2: stiff eggsac business. There's acidiform, which is the saran wrappie
Speaker 2: sheet that they mummy their prey with. It's two to
Speaker 2: three times as strong as that first dragline silk. And
Speaker 2: then there's also aggregate, which is hardcore glue silk. And
Speaker 2: they're produced by four to six hairy nubbins on their
Speaker 2: undercarriage called spinnerets, and those each have a bunch of
Speaker 2: nozzles kind of like froio dispensers, and then they're stretched
Speaker 2: out and it's extruded from the glands from the spinnerets.
Speaker 2: Does it look like a glove slowly waving at you
Speaker 2: palpating some goo. Yes, it does. But let's get back
Speaker 2: to the silk itself, and how different from a molecular
Speaker 2: structure are these six different types of silk.
Speaker 3: So they all of them have what I call a
Speaker 3: lego sequence. So those are sequences that naturally when they
Speaker 3: make a fiber interdigitate, so they literally have holes and
Speaker 3: pins just like legos do. So most of the silks
Speaker 3: have some form of lego. Now it turns out some
Speaker 3: of them have longer pins, some of them have bigger holes,
Speaker 3: some of them have you know, some variations, but all
Speaker 3: of them have something that allows them to stick together
Speaker 3: to make a fiber. Then the ones that have stretch
Speaker 3: have in there something looks like a slinky, you know,
Speaker 3: at a nanoscale. And so when it stretches and you
Speaker 3: let go, it retracts. As we said, the difference is
Speaker 3: that it doesn't retract as fast as you stretched it.
Speaker 3: So in that retraction that loses heat, and so you know,
Speaker 3: it keeps from basically serving as a trampoline. It's what's
Speaker 3: unique is that there are not variations but in those
Speaker 3: proteins between different species of spiders. So if you look
Speaker 3: at all of the orb weavers, the individual six proteins
Speaker 3: and the glue protein all look very very similar in
Speaker 3: each species compared to each other species. Now they look
Speaker 3: very different from each other, but not from the same
Speaker 3: silk in a different species. They can be separated for
Speaker 3: as much as one hundred and fifty million years, and
Speaker 3: still the silks you would recognize it. I mean somebody
Speaker 3: who's in the field would recognize instantly looking at that
Speaker 3: sequence which silk it was from any of those.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's probably a handful of you on Earth
Speaker 2: that could probably look at that and say, oh, I know,
Speaker 2: I thought I.
Speaker 3: Would hope there's more than that. Now at least, you know,
Speaker 3: my students should all know that. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: it's certainly a limited one. But it's they're really easily recognizable.
Speaker 2: And how are the spiders determining? Okay, I know I
Speaker 2: need a drag line here to make the framework of
Speaker 2: my net. I know I need somethings to get.
Speaker 3: It's all genetically programmed. It's absolutely clear. I mean, they
Speaker 3: have no brain in the sense of being able to
Speaker 3: make that decision, and so you know.
Speaker 2: They are hardwired.
Speaker 3: This silk does this, This silk does this, this silk
Speaker 3: does this. So you know, in some cases we can
Speaker 3: collect the silks from the spider directly, but most of
Speaker 3: the time it's difficult. For instance, they know that they
Speaker 3: want to use the prey wrapping silk when they have prey.
Speaker 3: So it turns out if you can find just the
Speaker 3: right frequency on the spider, then they'll believe that they
Speaker 3: have something to wrap, and I'll start putting that silk
Speaker 3: out so you can catch that. But most of them,
Speaker 3: you know, major and minor relatively easy. The rest of
Speaker 3: them are almost impossible to collect because you can't provide
Speaker 3: the right stimulus to get the right major. You just
Speaker 3: don't have the right trigger to tell it to do it.
Speaker 2: It's true a web can act like a harp. And
Speaker 2: spiders here with tiny slits in their feet totally normal
Speaker 2: and threw little hairs all over their body. And I
Speaker 2: got ensnared reading a paper titled micro and Nanostructural details
Speaker 2: of a spider's filter for substrate vibrations relevance for low
Speaker 2: frequency signal transmission. But again back to the web. You
Speaker 2: can buy a tiny spool of the golden silk on
Speaker 2: Etsy for two hundred dollars a gram, and I googled
Speaker 2: it and that was way more expensive than street drugs.
Speaker 2: So with this markesboard of silks, some have to be
Speaker 2: stronger and cooler than others, right, like, some have to
Speaker 2: be better. And now, which spider has the best silk?
Speaker 2: You know, I think that's a tough question.
Speaker 3: There There is a mark spider from South America is
Speaker 3: argued to have the strongest silk. Now, it's strongest in
Speaker 3: the combination of stretch and strength because it stretches lots
Speaker 3: more than most spider silks do, not because it's necessarily strong.
Speaker 3: The variations in the silk, even with an individual spider,
Speaker 3: are fairly large because they don't do a good job
Speaker 3: of controlling the diameter. Really, and whenever you measure strength,
Speaker 3: you measure it based on cross sectional area. So obviously,
Speaker 3: if something's fatter, then it's going to be stronger than
Speaker 3: something that's thinner.
Speaker 2: Just side note, think of a braid versus a hare,
Speaker 2: or a rope versus a thread, or one string of
Speaker 2: the cheese versus the whole string cheese. I'm so hungry.
Speaker 3: So you know, when you say what spider has the best,
Speaker 3: I think it's which silk is the best, And that's
Speaker 3: clearly dragline. It's got the best combination of strength and
Speaker 3: elasticity to give you the you know, that unique combination
Speaker 3: that no man made material beat is dragline silk.
Speaker 2: Where you're walking into the backyard at night and you
Speaker 2: get a web on your face and you feel like
Speaker 2: you're going to die.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know about the last part of that steam,
Speaker 3: But certainly it's it's actually the combination of all of them,
Speaker 3: because the web has four different silks in it, Okay,
Speaker 3: so it has major, minor, it has the glue, and
Speaker 3: it has the crapture spilled. So when you hit that, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it's it's it's probably more the fact that
Speaker 3: it adheres to your face because of the glue. It
Speaker 3: also stretches enough so you know you can sort of
Speaker 3: feel that your face is going into it. When it
Speaker 3: finally breaks, it's already now, you know, sort of attached
Speaker 3: all over there and stretch tight.
Speaker 2: Does that ever happen to you and you go, oh,
Speaker 2: good one, guys.
Speaker 3: Not very often, especially because you know, in the Rocky
Speaker 3: Mountains most of the webs are relatively well concealed, whereas
Speaker 3: you know in places like down south and you know,
Speaker 3: they stick them out anywhere because they have a much
Speaker 3: higher opportunity here and the Rockies most of them are
Speaker 3: where they're so light shining or something like that, or
Speaker 3: in a dark place at a barn. So it has happened
Speaker 3: occasionally in a barn where you know you just can't
Speaker 3: see him ntil it's too late.
Speaker 2: The ones that feel like very fine fishing line where
Speaker 2: you're you can almost feel it snappy. That was stronger
Speaker 2: than I expected it. Yeah, and who did I just
Speaker 2: wake up?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: Even though I love spiders, I'm like, yeah, I definitely
Speaker 2: don't want to ruin your home. I want to be
Speaker 2: like Hurricane Alley. Yeah, just coming through ps. One of
Speaker 2: the most beautiful things I have ever laid my actual
Speaker 2: eyes on is this eleven by four foot tapestry woven
Speaker 2: from golden or weaver silk. It was on display at
Speaker 2: the American Museum of Natural History of New York in
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine, and it was the first stop
Speaker 2: I made in New York when I went then. And
Speaker 2: it looks kind of like a table runner but made
Speaker 2: out of sunlight, or like a bedspread woven from an
Speaker 2: angel's laugh. It also looked expensive and took several years
Speaker 2: of milking wild malagassy spiders to make. It was casual.
Speaker 2: And now, what are some applications of spider silk? I know.
Speaker 2: The only thing that I'm familiar with that I think
Speaker 2: of that comes to mind is this tapestry that was
Speaker 2: woven on golden or weaver silk that's been on display,
Speaker 2: and I mentioned it to you earlier and you said
Speaker 2: that it makes you kind of sad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because clearly, you know it was done by hand
Speaker 3: by women in Madagascar, and it's obviously they were not
Speaker 3: paid a lot of money for the amount of work
Speaker 3: they had to do, so you know it, I think
Speaker 3: it's an amazing accomplishment. Clearly, it is, without a doubt,
Speaker 3: the largest amount of spider silk that's ever been used
Speaker 3: for any purpose whatsoever. And you know, the women had
Speaker 3: to collect the silk from the spider and then they
Speaker 3: had to weave it into the tapestry and that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff, so it's amazing.
Speaker 2: It's just, you know, I feel like the people over.
Speaker 3: There may have been I mean, maybe they had no
Speaker 3: jobs in a dollar day or whatever they got paid
Speaker 3: was still better than nothing, and maybe it was, but
Speaker 3: it's a huge amount of manpower for something that's wonderful
Speaker 3: to look at an art object. But beyond that, I'm
Speaker 3: not sure you couldn't have made something, you know what,
Speaker 3: tenth that size and still been an impressive accomplishment in
Speaker 3: terms of that.
Speaker 2: So I hadn't considered this, and it's a great point.
Speaker 2: The two men who made the tapestry were from Europe.
Speaker 2: In America and they were hiring locals and with three
Speaker 2: thousand giant spiders harvested, milked, and returned to the wild
Speaker 2: daily over a course of four years. A budget of
Speaker 2: a half a million dollars is pretty low for that
Speaker 2: amount of toil, and it rightfully dims the glow of
Speaker 2: the original work for me, But it also shines a
Speaker 2: light on why Randy's work understanding and figuring out more
Speaker 2: affordable ways to harvest this material is so important. He's
Speaker 2: not looking to fabricate a cape so that an alabaster
Speaker 2: supermodel can strut in it for a few minutes before
Speaker 2: it's returned to a lock box. And the work that
Speaker 2: you're doing with spider tech, what types of materials do
Speaker 2: you think that you'll be getting to fabricate and how
Speaker 2: will that kind of change the way that we live
Speaker 2: potentially hopefully fingers crossed, all arms crossed. Yeah, right.
Speaker 3: So I think that what most people are not very
Speaker 3: aware of is is that we've been able to develop
Speaker 3: uses other than just fibers. And I think everybody when
Speaker 3: you think about spider silk, you think about clothing, you
Speaker 3: think about bulletproof vests, you think about climbing ropes, think
Speaker 3: about lots of things along those lines, but on the fiber.
Speaker 3: And in addition, we think there's a real opportunity for
Speaker 3: composite materials, especially something like epoxy based composite materials that
Speaker 3: comes from two reasons. One is unique combination of stretch
Speaker 3: and strength, and there's no other materials out there that
Speaker 3: you could use for reinforcing to do that.
Speaker 2: So a composite epoxy material is usually made of say
Speaker 2: glass strands or carbon fibers embedded in a glue or
Speaker 2: a resin. So picture something made out of fiberglass and
Speaker 2: then imagine an upgrade to spidrone.
Speaker 3: The second is that we've found that spider silk can
Speaker 3: be made into an amazing adhesive. Well, we know ours
Speaker 3: adheres to plastic, it is here, adheres to metilate, ad
Speaker 3: here's to.
Speaker 2: Would.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's almost nothing that we can't cote. Using
Speaker 3: it as thin films, using it for coatings, there's almost
Speaker 3: nothing we can't cote. And part of the coding idea
Speaker 3: is that we can put additives in there. So, for instance,
Speaker 3: coating catheters, we can put antimicrobials and anti fouling factors
Speaker 3: so that you don't get infections when you implant a
Speaker 3: catheter and they don't plug up at the end, which
Speaker 3: which happens to a pretty amazingly high percentage of catheters
Speaker 3: that get implanted in hospitals. I think everything for medical,
Speaker 3: there's clearly interest in the defense department and lots of
Speaker 3: things in between.
Speaker 2: It seems absolutely unreal that it can be as strong
Speaker 2: as steel a lot lighter.
Speaker 3: Sure, it's because it's got a combination of strength and stretch,
Speaker 3: and that's really what makes it unique.
Speaker 2: I think. Side note, if you've never had a catheter
Speaker 2: but just googled one to get an idea of how
Speaker 2: they work, Wow, who boy, howdy hot damn. I would
Speaker 2: like that to not get infected please, So thanks spiders.
Speaker 2: And also, like we heard in the Bones episode of Osteology,
Speaker 2: strength and flexibility is what make things work the best.
Speaker 2: So let spiders inspire you it's okay to stand up
Speaker 2: for yourself and be strong, but maybe have some wiggle
Speaker 2: room or compromise when called for. So we might have
Speaker 2: cars that have a chassis made out of spider silk
Speaker 2: and panels that are made out of spider silk.
Speaker 3: Right, and again, they'll become positive materials but you can
Speaker 3: imagine if you design it right, then maybe you don't
Speaker 3: get a ding the next time somebody taps your bumper
Speaker 3: because you've got something that flexes and comes back again. Right,
Speaker 3: They're just going to bend and pop right back out again.
Speaker 3: Thanks spiders, exactly what is your relationship to spiders?
Speaker 2: I don't et spiders.
Speaker 3: I love them, you know, I guess I've always had
Speaker 3: some admiration, but certainly, you know, since we started this work,
Speaker 3: it's it's hard not to be incredibly admiring about their success.
Speaker 3: I mean recognizing that, you know, you find them in
Speaker 3: the dead of the rainforest, you find them in the
Speaker 3: middle of the desert every place but Antarctica, and they
Speaker 3: were there before it got too cold for.
Speaker 2: Anything to survive.
Speaker 3: The fact that they have such a wide variation in prey,
Speaker 3: they have such a wide variation and capture strategies, it's
Speaker 3: pretty impressive to realize just how successful they are as
Speaker 3: an organism.
Speaker 2: Do you get a lot of spider gifts? I see
Speaker 2: that you have some knick knacks.
Speaker 3: I got I got quite a few in my office,
Speaker 3: and I've gathered most of them here. Some of them
Speaker 3: I've I've actually gotten some of them been given to me, so,
Speaker 3: but it's.
Speaker 2: Hard not to. So It's true he had a fair
Speaker 2: amount of tasteful spider nick knackery on the windowsill, and
Speaker 2: we took a picture each holding a woven spider. They
Speaker 2: were not in a glass case, nor did they break
Speaker 2: anyone's bank. They were just made out of wire, probably
Speaker 2: cotton threads. When it comes to well, when it comes
Speaker 2: to the future of spider silk, how far off is it?
Speaker 2: I mean, are we talking like in maybe twenty years
Speaker 2: I'll get to wear a spider vest.
Speaker 3: I think the answer is no, And I think the
Speaker 3: fiber in is going to come faster than we initially
Speaker 3: thought because we can use the transient silkworms to make fibers.
Speaker 3: Now that our best fibers from the transient silkworms are
Speaker 3: as good as spider silk, and in some ways you
Speaker 3: might even argue a little better, but certainly as good
Speaker 3: as native dragline silk. So that means that we have
Speaker 3: a relatively easy manufacturing process to be able to make
Speaker 3: large amounts of of that.
Speaker 2: And walk me through how you have managed to take
Speaker 2: spider silk and have it made in the lab and
Speaker 2: made through other organisms instead of having to hand spool
Speaker 2: anefhela spider and Madagascar. Sure, how are you doing it right?
Speaker 3: So you know, as part of the first week, we
Speaker 3: did identified the genes that the spiders used to make
Speaker 3: spider silk protein. Then what we do is take that
Speaker 3: gene and usually we make a synthetic copy because the
Speaker 3: use of certain codons in the DNA is species dependent.
Speaker 3: So for instance, the spiders use certain ones and he
Speaker 3: Colli bacteria uses different ones. So we try to do
Speaker 3: is match up. We make the same protein sequence, we
Speaker 3: just make it with different sequence of DNA so that
Speaker 3: it matches better with what the organism uses. Then we
Speaker 3: just take that gene and pop it into the organism
Speaker 3: we're looking at.
Speaker 2: Okay, sit the hell down, because this is bananas and
Speaker 2: it may inspire this year's Halloween costume. Okay, so, almost
Speaker 2: a decade ago, Randy and a research team we're able
Speaker 2: to splice spider silk making jeans into goats, and the
Speaker 2: goats then produced liquid spider silk in their milk, and
Speaker 2: Randy was able to filter out the silk and then
Speaker 2: stretch it to the right consistency using machinery. So while
Speaker 2: he got to hold a lot of baby goats and
Speaker 2: pet baby goats on the head and essentially be a
Speaker 2: wizardy science shepherd of transgenic spider goats. There was a
Speaker 2: lot of milk being tossed, so then they spliced the
Speaker 2: spider silk Jean into the DNA of silkworm moths, and
Speaker 2: rather than standard silk, those caterpillars now spun this highly
Speaker 2: durable and really prized spider silk with much less waste.
Speaker 2: And when I visited his lab, there were trays of
Speaker 2: chonky caterpillars, just macha mancha manchin on ground mullberry pellets,
Speaker 2: and there were also other trays filled with soft egg
Speaker 2: looking cocoons that would be boiled and spooled with the silkworms.
Speaker 3: We were one because technology advanced significantly further. We were
Speaker 3: able to actually cut and splice an our gene in
Speaker 3: exactly the same spot as the gene was for the
Speaker 3: silkworm silk protein. So now everything there is exactly the
Speaker 3: same as it was, except there's a different protein being made.
Speaker 3: Instead of the silkworm protein is making the spider silk protein,
Speaker 3: and it proceeds to just put it right into the
Speaker 3: cocoon as if it were its own silk.
Speaker 2: And when you're saying you just pop the code in,
Speaker 2: I have a feeling it's a little bit more complicated
Speaker 2: than that. How does one do transgenic like recoding?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: So in the random ones, you know, there are lots
Speaker 3: of DNA out there that allows you to randomly insert
Speaker 3: something into a chromosome, and so it just randomly goes in.
Speaker 3: The new Crisper CAST nine system allows you to very
Speaker 3: precisely make two cuts and then you now have a
Speaker 3: gap in the DNA and the cells used two methods,
Speaker 3: one of which is very precise but very low frequency
Speaker 3: it does another one that's very imprecise but much higher frequency,
Speaker 3: and we went with both and the only one that
Speaker 3: worked was imprecise in large amounts.
Speaker 2: Okay, So it meant that we could put it in.
Speaker 2: We didn't have to be exact.
Speaker 3: If you do the other way, you got to be
Speaker 3: exact because it's going to fit it right where it's
Speaker 3: supposed to be. This one, you got some slop in
Speaker 3: exactly where it goes, but it still goes in the
Speaker 3: same site that we cut out, which was in this
Speaker 3: case the silkworm silk protein gene.
Speaker 2: And what did you start with? Did you start by
Speaker 2: putting these genes into E coli, and then did you
Speaker 2: move up to goats and then alfalfa and then.
Speaker 3: Yes, So we started with back here just because they're easy.
Speaker 3: You know, we can put come up with a new gene,
Speaker 3: we can pop it in E. Coli and get protein
Speaker 3: in three to four months. We then went to the goats,
Speaker 3: and we worked with a company in Canada who had
Speaker 3: already deve up to technology to get it into the
Speaker 3: goat's milk, so that we you know, we were able
Speaker 3: to take their technology and our technology, put them together
Speaker 3: and and in it with the spider goats.
Speaker 2: Peanut butter and chocolate. Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy, these
Speaker 2: pairings have nothing on spider goats. Now, what if you're
Speaker 2: too vegan for all? This business is outsourcing spiderin limited
Speaker 2: to goats and caterpillars. Nope, they're also working on cramming
Speaker 2: the gene into and harvesting silk frum alf alfa.
Speaker 3: We then sort we started on alfalfa, and then you know,
Speaker 3: more recently, in the last couple of years, we've moved
Speaker 3: on to the silkworm particular precision. But the silkworm's before
Speaker 3: what now almost eight or nine years ago we did,
Speaker 3: but we did it very precisely. And so the problem
Speaker 3: was is that when you bread those worms, a lot
Speaker 3: of times they'd lose that gene because it wasn't in
Speaker 3: the identical place that they expected it to be. So
Speaker 3: now we've got it in right where it should be
Speaker 3: and we're through. We've done five generator, four generations, and
Speaker 3: it behaves just exactly like it's expected to be. I mean,
Speaker 3: it gets carried on to the next generation at a
Speaker 3: certain frequency, which is exactly what you'd expect to have happen.
Speaker 5: M h.
Speaker 2: And let's say you're working with E. Coli. You are
Speaker 2: getting the protein in a liquid form and then extruding
Speaker 2: that or can you walk me through really briefly, like
Speaker 2: with each of those different organisms, how you're harvesting it.
Speaker 3: Right, So with both with alfalfa, with the goats, with
Speaker 3: the bacteria, process is the same. We have to isolate
Speaker 3: the spider soil protein and although it's slightly different technology
Speaker 3: that you use, bottom line is you have to end
Speaker 3: up with pure protein protein. Once you have the pure protein,
Speaker 3: then we've developed the technology allows it to dissolve it
Speaker 3: in water and that's a huge advance because previous to
Speaker 3: that and still a large number of people working in
Speaker 3: the field dissolve it and some pretty nasty materials. And
Speaker 3: the other thing is that they're all costly, so you
Speaker 3: can't imagine that as a real step forward in manufacturing process.
Speaker 3: So being able to dissolve it in water is a
Speaker 3: big step forward. Then we you know, we can spin
Speaker 3: fibers out of that, we can use it for coatings,
Speaker 3: we can use it as an adhesive. All of those
Speaker 3: things fall out of having it in water. The silkworm
Speaker 3: makes fibers for us, and so you know, literally we
Speaker 3: use the standard, the standard technology for unwrapping cocoons, washing
Speaker 3: the silk and wrapping it onto a spool.
Speaker 2: Ps. How is silk spun? Well? I watched a video
Speaker 2: put out by how It's made and they had this
Speaker 2: to say.
Speaker 4: It's hard to believe this beautiful fabric comes from worms.
Speaker 4: The female silkworm lays up to four hundred eggs in
Speaker 4: one shot, then promptly dies.
Speaker 2: Okay, how it's made, it's not really a worm. And
Speaker 2: also a lady's silk moth has like a tragic flightless
Speaker 2: life and then her babies are boiled, so that the
Speaker 2: cocoon doesn't break, and the threads, which can be nearly
Speaker 2: a kilometer long, stay in one continue for so fifty
Speaker 2: or so cocoons are unraveled, they're spun into one thread.
Speaker 2: It's labor intensive. So if you see a guy who
Speaker 2: has ever tossed his tie over his shoulder because he's
Speaker 2: eating chili, you can be like, I get it. A
Speaker 2: lot of non worms lost their lives for that tie.
Speaker 2: When you think about ramping it up to a more
Speaker 2: say a commercial level, what do you think is going
Speaker 2: to be the avenue that you're going to go down.
Speaker 2: Do you think it's going to be the pure fiber
Speaker 2: from silkworms, or do you think the alfalfa has the
Speaker 2: best yield.
Speaker 3: So I think I certainly believe ultimately alfalfa is going
Speaker 3: to be the way to go to make protein. The
Speaker 3: problem with the if silkworms is the only thing you're
Speaker 3: going to do is get fibers. Trying to dissolve that
Speaker 3: silk is an incredible losing proposition, you know it, Just
Speaker 3: it's not the way to get spider silk protein. So
Speaker 3: spider silk protein's either going to be you know, from
Speaker 3: one of the other three and hopefully, you know, we're
Speaker 3: going to advance the technology, so alfalf will be the
Speaker 3: because certainly by all stretches, it looks like it's going
Speaker 3: to be the least expensive process to goatee.
Speaker 2: And then with byproduct you were mentioned earlier, but that
Speaker 2: when you put this into goats and goat milk, that's great,
Speaker 2: but then you have some excess goat milk that you
Speaker 2: can't do much with. You can't necessarily take that to
Speaker 2: the farmer's market on a Sunday spider goat milk. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: not going to happen. Not going to happen.
Speaker 3: That's one of the big advantages of alfalfa is that
Speaker 3: you know, we'll take out two percent of the protein.
Speaker 3: The other ninety eight percent we can use for animal feed,
Speaker 3: use it as a protein supplement. Turns out that things
Speaker 3: like fish farms are struggling to get enough protein to expand,
Speaker 3: so we'd have protein that we'd be able to use there.
Speaker 3: You can also convert all of that waste into ethanol
Speaker 3: if you want to use that. So I think there
Speaker 3: are a number of roots that you could use for
Speaker 3: your waste from alfalfa that I actually will probably pay
Speaker 3: for the processing.
Speaker 2: So spiderwebs not just terrifying midnight face veils. They could
Speaker 2: also feed fish and keep lethal catheter funk away and
Speaker 2: make your car lighter and more efficient, and maybe be
Speaker 2: transplanted into your own body. And what is something that
Speaker 2: in your career isolating this for the last thirty years
Speaker 2: and working with it that you were really looking forward
Speaker 2: to as a goal or as kind of a goal post.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think it's still there. And I
Speaker 3: think all of you know, for the last at least
Speaker 3: ten to fifteen years. I think all of the people
Speaker 3: that have been working in my lab want to see
Speaker 3: a product come out. And I think that's sort of
Speaker 3: at least a major goal is to say, you know,
Speaker 3: all the work that we've done has led to something
Speaker 3: that somebody can buy.
Speaker 2: I feel like you are at the forefront of it.
Speaker 2: If there's an expert in this, it's you in the world.
Speaker 3: Well, we've certainly been at it longer than anybody else,
Speaker 3: and I think we've done more basic I would say,
Speaker 3: without a doubt we've done more basic science in terms
Speaker 3: of not only the proteins, but how the fibers are made,
Speaker 3: the three dimensional structure in the fibers and things like that.
Speaker 3: I think we've done more than anybody else. You know,
Speaker 3: there are people have niches, but I think we've covered
Speaker 3: the whole waterfront.
Speaker 2: Have you ever thought about just getting a silk time
Speaker 2: made a bow tie for a special occasion.
Speaker 3: You know, it's not my style, so you know, if
Speaker 3: it's going to be something, you'd be a golf shirt.
Speaker 3: So you know that's the direction I'd go as a
Speaker 3: golf shirt.
Speaker 2: So a spider silk golf shirt. Spider silk golf shirt.
Speaker 2: I got no idea.
Speaker 3: There's no obvious reason why it would be an advantage,
Speaker 3: but you know, at least you'd have a talking point
Speaker 3: when you're out playing.
Speaker 2: So you'd have to get a big embroidered spider exactly
Speaker 2: front and back, front and back. Can I ask questions
Speaker 2: from listeners? Sure? Oh my gosh, listeners have questions. Okay,
Speaker 2: before we get into your spidy silk queries, a few
Speaker 2: words about sponsors of the show who helped make it
Speaker 2: possible to donate to a cause of the ologists choosing
Speaker 2: each week, and I realized this week that I forgot
Speaker 2: to ask Randy, so I rang them up on the horn,
Speaker 2: just normcore as hell, and he answered at his desk
Speaker 2: phones man their magic and then he said he'd like
Speaker 2: the donation to go toward the Women's Empowerment and Entrepreneurship
Speaker 2: Project in Guatemala which supports women run farming initiatives to
Speaker 2: bring to market textiles, organic vegetables and free range chickens.
Speaker 2: And this was through Heffer dot Org. Okay, now you
Speaker 2: may hear some words about some sponsors get value.
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Speaker 2: Now this first question was also asked by Amanda. Anna
Speaker 2: Thompson says, there's a series of photos that go around
Speaker 2: every now and then of spider webs when they are
Speaker 2: on different drugs. Are these real images? And if we
Speaker 2: learned anything from giving spiders drugs, do they just have
Speaker 2: a good time like spider's given cash.
Speaker 3: So the answer is that because the the you know,
Speaker 3: the the web spinning process is really genetically set, the
Speaker 3: drugs do mess it up. It turns out that the
Speaker 3: first paper was published in Scientific America in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 4: I was sixties. You know a lot of drugs kicking around.
Speaker 3: And the answer is, yes, that various drugs have substantial
Speaker 3: effects on sort of of deranged might be too strong
Speaker 3: a word, but probably not inaccurate about what the webs
Speaker 3: look like when they're on various drugs.
Speaker 2: Really. Yeah, this was indeed a study and it was
Speaker 2: later replicated in the mid nineteen nineties by NASA. So
Speaker 2: if you look up pictures, you'll see these scattered and
Speaker 2: kind of haphazard webs on uppers and caffeine. There are
Speaker 2: half completed ones on hallucinogens, and let's just say some
Speaker 2: geometric minimalism done on sleeping pills. So, according to researchers,
Speaker 2: each of the spiders interviewed during the process thought their
Speaker 2: web looked great and was hella tight and then upon
Speaker 2: waking the next morning, a lot of spiders reported being
Speaker 2: embarrassed by their work. They thought it was a lot
Speaker 2: better when they were under the influence.
Speaker 3: That's not true, and to the best of my knowledge,
Speaker 3: there's no real correlation between what the drug was and
Speaker 3: what it did to disturb it. But it's probably because
Speaker 3: we don't know enough about the nervous system of a
Speaker 3: spider to actually be able to, you know, to make
Speaker 3: an acurate judgment about, you know, what they're doing on
Speaker 3: various kinds of drugs.
Speaker 2: I just looked at my phone, by the way, and
Speaker 2: I accidentally asked that question. It for twenty which is
Speaker 2: I'm not a big smoker, but it was gotta say
Speaker 2: that was good timing. Kimberly Fajardo wants to know just
Speaker 2: how strong is spider silk.
Speaker 3: So the idea is that in terms of energy to break,
Speaker 3: which is the combination of stretch and strength, it's about
Speaker 3: four times stronger than kevlar, ten to twelve times stronger
Speaker 3: than steel. And it's important to remember that it's that
Speaker 3: combination of stretch and strength that makes the spider silk unique.
Speaker 3: So there are no man made materials there are no
Speaker 3: other biological materials that have that kind of a combination.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Evelyn Jensen wants to know does spider silk come
Speaker 2: in different colors?
Speaker 3: Interestingly enough, the answer is yes to a certain extent.
Speaker 3: So one of the spiders that we work with us
Speaker 3: called a golden orb weaver, and it's silk is actually
Speaker 3: a gold color. You mentioned the tapestry. If you see
Speaker 3: a picture of the tapestry, it's very gold colored, so
Speaker 3: very distinctive of the golden orb weavers. There's another spider
Speaker 3: and by the way, nobody knows why it's gold. Nobody
Speaker 3: knows what the We actually spend a little time and
Speaker 3: got a little sidetracked trying to identify the dye or
Speaker 3: what it was. We never were successful in getting there,
Speaker 3: to the best of my knowledge, neither is anybody else.
Speaker 3: There's another spider that makes sort of a greenish, huge silk,
Speaker 3: and then there's a whole family that make everything from
Speaker 3: sort of a brownish silk to a pinky silk, but
Speaker 3: they use it almost exclusively for their egg cases. So
Speaker 3: it's clearly to camouflage the egg case. So if you
Speaker 3: go out you can you can find these because you
Speaker 3: don't see it in the dragline silk. You only see
Speaker 3: it when they make their their egg case. So there
Speaker 3: there's a pretty wide variety of colors that are out there,
Speaker 3: particularly for the egg cases.
Speaker 2: So spiders are just out there using their stiffest silk
Speaker 2: to make little Easter eggs. Oh and if you are
Speaker 2: an expectant parent and you're not sure what kind of
Speaker 2: nursery theme you want, consider camo. I mean you won't
Speaker 2: be able to find the baby under all its grease
Speaker 2: paint and tiny mossy gilly suit onesie. But also no
Speaker 2: bears will probably eat it. Spiders know it's up. Moving
Speaker 2: on Deli Dames Ashley Kelly, Caleb Patten, Cannon Party and
Speaker 2: first time question asker Lawrence All echoed Christina's question, Christina
Speaker 2: Neil wants to know how do you feel about Spider Man?
Speaker 2: Is there even an ounce of truth to the idea
Speaker 2: that spider silk supporting the weight of a human being
Speaker 2: could be used or that it could be used in weaponry.
Speaker 3: So it turns out that that's a very interesting question,
Speaker 3: and we have answered it. We got answered. We got
Speaker 3: asked that question the first time from a children's program
Speaker 3: at the Canadian Broadcasting Company radio program and they ask us,
Speaker 3: you know, particularly, I guess it's Spider Man two really
Speaker 3: stops the train and asks the question, could.
Speaker 2: He really do it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so put the students to work on it and answers, yes,
Speaker 3: there's no question. So we you know, we took it
Speaker 3: like the last spit on it. A reading was like
Speaker 3: one hundred and twenty miles an hour, and we counted
Speaker 3: up how many cars there were and how big the engine.
Speaker 3: We got rough weights for those, so we were able
Speaker 3: to calculate how much energy was in that train and
Speaker 3: then go back and look how many times did he
Speaker 3: stick the web onto the wall? And the answer is
Speaker 3: he actually was about three times over having the ability
Speaker 3: to stop the train. That was kind of where we
Speaker 3: left it. Then we got another question, you know, and
Speaker 3: somebody came up with, well, how much would he have
Speaker 3: to consume to make the spot because it's all protein
Speaker 3: right right.
Speaker 2: So it turns out.
Speaker 3: We calculated that was about had to eat about eighty
Speaker 3: five pounds of steak a day, So we felt like, yes,
Speaker 3: it was possible, but clearly practically it's unlikely that he
Speaker 3: could have managed to eat enough to make as much
Speaker 3: spider So protein as as he was able to shoot
Speaker 3: out a sizzler.
Speaker 2: Ps. In real life, it wouldn't shoot from his wrists, though,
Speaker 2: because a more anatomically accurate spider man would extrude silk
Speaker 2: from the slowly wriggling fingers right next to his anus.
Speaker 2: Keeping that in mind, are you hungry? Who else asked
Speaker 2: about eating? Let's see Brandon Butler wants to know is
Speaker 2: it true that spiders can eat their silk and recycle it.
Speaker 3: The answer is yes, several species do that. Some of
Speaker 3: them do it actually on a daily basis. So it
Speaker 3: turns out to be very useful because initially, when people
Speaker 3: are trying to understand something about the proteins, they would
Speaker 3: put radioactive amino acids on the web and then allow
Speaker 3: the spider to eat it.
Speaker 2: What we've done is not.
Speaker 3: Used radioactive but used amino acids that we can use
Speaker 3: for nuclear magnetic resonance studies for structure, and we put
Speaker 3: it in their water, and so when they drink the water,
Speaker 3: they recycles amino acids and it goes right into the self.
Speaker 3: So the answer is yes, they do, and it's a
Speaker 3: very useful thing to do when you're studying the silk itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I imagine then they can just kind of
Speaker 2: destroy and munch on their own web and rebuild it
Speaker 2: if it gets damaged.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, frequently they don't do that. Usually when it's
Speaker 3: going to be repaired, they don't seem to clean up
Speaker 3: the old web. They just put a new one, you know,
Speaker 3: fill in that area with new silk.
Speaker 2: Oh. Just imagine an HGTV show where you make a house,
Speaker 2: but your building materials come from your butt, and then
Speaker 2: when it kind of starts looking shabby, you just eat
Speaker 2: the whole house, make another buttthouse. It's rustic, it's resourceful,
Speaker 2: it's d Why why why? Speaking of why, some other
Speaker 2: folks shared this next question, and they are Evan Jude,
Speaker 2: Amanda Baldino Casey and Anna Thompson. Wants to know related
Speaker 2: why do some spiders string webs across wide expanses like
Speaker 2: paths and trails and doorways instead of smaller areas. I
Speaker 2: imagine she has gotten a spider face on her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's possibly two depending on one.
Speaker 2: Is is that that?
Speaker 3: Again, they don't plan very well, they're not really intelligent
Speaker 3: about it, so they may start with some guidelines that
Speaker 3: are way out and then a web that's more in
Speaker 3: the middle. But also as they get larger, they need
Speaker 3: to make a bigger web just to catch more prey.
Speaker 3: So as they increase in size that their need for
Speaker 3: food increases, so they usually make a bigger web.
Speaker 2: Oh, they got to catch more little buggos. That's right,
Speaker 2: that's right. Ashley Kelly wants to know after listening to
Speaker 2: a podcast called Biology of Superhero Spider Man episode. I
Speaker 2: have so many questions like can it really be used
Speaker 2: in healing wounds and tendons? And how thick would it
Speaker 2: need to be to support me in order to swing
Speaker 2: from building to building? So we can go to the
Speaker 2: last one.
Speaker 3: I have no idea what your weight is, so I
Speaker 3: won't present to say anything like that. We have had
Speaker 3: a student suspended in a chair from the ceiling and
Speaker 3: the line was narrower than a pencil, so it was
Speaker 3: it was not that big. Certainly in the Spider Man movies,
Speaker 3: you look at the at the diameter of the sulky shooting,
Speaker 3: there's no question that he could do what he does.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is changing how I feel about Spider Man movies.
Speaker 2: I like them even more out and then what about
Speaker 2: biomedical purposes tendons? Yeah, patrons who wanted to know about
Speaker 2: medical uses are Lacy J. Schuer, Amanda and Laura Merriman,
Speaker 2: who shouted out ologites beloved Thermo physiologist doctor Shane Campbell
Speaker 2: Stayton and his Biology of Superheroes podcast episode on Spider
Speaker 2: Man as another excellent resource on medical uses of the silk.
Speaker 3: So we certainly think there's a good opportunity for artificial
Speaker 3: ligaments and artificial tendons because one of the unique features
Speaker 3: about spider silk is that, for whatever reason, it's almost
Speaker 3: impossible to get an immune response to it, really, even.
Speaker 2: When you try so.
Speaker 3: For instance, I know of nobody who's ever made antibodies
Speaker 3: to the main portion of the spider silk protein. You
Speaker 3: can make it to the end parts, you can't make
Speaker 3: it to the main part of the protein. And we've tried,
Speaker 3: we've tried different organisms, we've tried doing it in different ways.
Speaker 3: It just does not generate an immune reaction. And we've
Speaker 3: done some work here, not in massive detail, but we've
Speaker 3: demonstrated that you can implant our synthetic spider silk fibers
Speaker 3: and some of our synthetic fiber silk films into animals
Speaker 3: and not get any reaction at all, which is a
Speaker 3: huge benefit.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Absolutely. And now spider Tech is a company obviously
Speaker 2: that you are, that you're involved with, and what do
Speaker 2: you think the kind of principal goal of spy Tech is?
Speaker 2: And also how did you come up with a name?
Speaker 3: I did, Roberto came up with them. I think that,
Speaker 3: you know, adhesives encodings are going to be the first
Speaker 3: place we go because I think it's got the lowest
Speaker 3: barrier to market in terms of that. I think it
Speaker 3: has unique capabilities that aren't out there right now, which
Speaker 3: again I think is important if you're coming out with
Speaker 3: a new product.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He mentioned to me that Spidey was a good
Speaker 2: way to get people not scared of spiders and to
Speaker 2: think of it in a kind of a oh Spidey nay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think, you know, part of that comes
Speaker 3: from Spider Man movie because Spidey's certainly, you know, used
Speaker 3: multiple times there.
Speaker 2: You like that Spidy, So you're right.
Speaker 3: I think it does present a much more acceptable kind
Speaker 3: of a use as opposed to a racking a cream
Speaker 3: or something like that.
Speaker 2: So Spidey does seem so friendly. I'm a spider. I
Speaker 2: make cool stuff here to help that's right, exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: It's a very super heroic name. Eva also asked this question.
Speaker 2: Nanine wants to know is it true that most spiders
Speaker 2: we see out in the world are female for the or.
Speaker 3: Weavers and that's what most people see. The answer is yes,
Speaker 3: I mean, in general, the females do put out the webs.
Speaker 3: Many not maybe I would say probably most of the
Speaker 3: males hang out and actually steal their food because they're
Speaker 3: much smaller, so they're only about to temphesize. Of the
Speaker 3: females steal their food and hope not to get eaten,
Speaker 3: because I mean, the males are there for one thing,
Speaker 3: that's to deliver asperm sack and to procreate. That's the
Speaker 3: only thing they do delivery for you.
Speaker 2: They're just busters.
Speaker 3: They're just maybe pretty much leeches.
Speaker 2: Speaking of little disappointments, Emily asks what are cobwebs versus
Speaker 2: spider webs and why don't I notice the cobwebs until
Speaker 2: long after the spider is gone?
Speaker 3: So most so cobwebs. The proteins that cobweb weavers use
Speaker 3: are in many cases very similar to the proteins the
Speaker 3: or weavers use, So the cobwebs basically a three dimensional net.
Speaker 3: It does not have any adhesive on it. So what
Speaker 3: happens is that the organism physically gets in and can't
Speaker 3: find its way out, okay, as opposed to being stuck
Speaker 3: on the web blight with an orb web. And so
Speaker 3: that's one of the major differences. That's why most of
Speaker 3: those have a more potent poison because they got to
Speaker 3: catch them in and keep them from getting away.
Speaker 2: Got it right, exactly exactly. So if there's spun as
Speaker 2: a cobweb, they are a different structure, but also a
Speaker 2: cobweb can refer to that dusty web that's lost its
Speaker 2: stick and been abandoned. But just think of how many
Speaker 2: more cob webs you would have to clean up if
Speaker 2: spiders didn't do it for you by eating them.
Speaker 5: Spider.
Speaker 3: I think part of the reason you don't see them
Speaker 3: normally is you usually see them after they're abandoned and
Speaker 3: dust starts gathering on them. So when they're there, you
Speaker 3: want them pretty. You want them so that that you're
Speaker 3: not very visible because you want something to fly into
Speaker 3: it and then get lost in there. So if it's
Speaker 3: very visible, they're going to avoid it. Yeah, So I
Speaker 3: think that that the reason you see it is is
Speaker 3: that you know they're cobwebs, and people usually think about
Speaker 3: it after they get dust on them.
Speaker 2: This is just my question, But how dope are your
Speaker 2: Halloween decorations every year? Not all that much?
Speaker 3: Actually, okay, I you know we we don't do anything
Speaker 3: unique there. For some reason, to me, spiders are more
Speaker 3: in all year thing than a once a day thing.
Speaker 2: So once a year thing. So I felt that way
Speaker 2: about Halloween when I was Goth, I was like, don't
Speaker 2: dress up as me on one day. That's right. I'm
Speaker 2: like this all the time. Yeah, I'm constantly wearing fishnet shirts, like,
Speaker 2: don't do it just Halloween. So I get it. Did
Speaker 2: you ever watch a movie about like a haunted house
Speaker 2: and you think spiders wouldn't make those kind of whibs?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: But you know the fact is is that that the
Speaker 3: spider webs come in such a variety of different shapes
Speaker 3: and sizes that you know, yeah, you'd say that's probably outlandish,
Speaker 3: but you'd never say, oh, I wouldn't guarantee you'd never
Speaker 3: find one like that. Oh.
Speaker 2: I forgot to ask you before we get back to
Speaker 2: patron questions, is there any flim flam that you'd like
Speaker 2: to debunk, like any myths about or spider silk that
Speaker 2: you're just sick of hearing, Like, okay, let's clear this up.
Speaker 3: I think part of it is certainly that a lot
Speaker 3: of people believe that all the spiders are poisonous, certainly
Speaker 3: as far as poisonous for humans. The answer is that's
Speaker 3: just simply not true.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: You know, there's three depending on how you argue about it.
Speaker 3: There might be a fourth one in the US.
Speaker 2: And Randy means venomous, poison is ingested, venom is injected.
Speaker 2: But you know what he means, do not waste your
Speaker 2: finger muscles emailing or tweeting me about it. Spend that
Speaker 2: energy giving a hard working and busy spider a little wave. Yeah, well,
Speaker 2: thumbs up.
Speaker 3: So the other thing is is that a study done
Speaker 3: in Australia demonstrated and this was people who came to
Speaker 3: the hospital claiming you've been bitten by spider and they
Speaker 3: actual they checked it and less than less than ten
Speaker 3: percent and we're actually bitten by spider.
Speaker 2: Really Yeah.
Speaker 3: Mosquitoes, Yeah, all kinds of other things, some of them
Speaker 3: aren't even bites. Oh, so you know, you hear all
Speaker 3: these people say Oh, yeah, I got a spider bite
Speaker 3: last night, and you're going you know, you got a
Speaker 3: ninety percent chance of being full.
Speaker 2: Of it, right, Trish, that's a hickey. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: that's right. That's right. Dave, you've got a ZiT on
Speaker 2: your neck. Yeah, get out of here, right. Someone asked
Speaker 2: jen anthis asked all this talk about eating bugs? Can
Speaker 2: we eat spider webs? Sometimes that's the only thing I
Speaker 2: have in the house shrug emoji. She says, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of protein. Could we one day be eating.
Speaker 3: Spider So, first of all, there isn't a lot of protein.
Speaker 3: Most of the webs way very little. So, for instance,
Speaker 3: the entire gland that makes dragline silk is only good
Speaker 3: for about one hundred milligrams max. Now that's good for
Speaker 3: several hundred yards of single fiber silk, but that's not
Speaker 3: a lot to eat, right. Number two, the spider silk,
Speaker 3: I'm sure is digestible to a certain extent. But what
Speaker 3: we found is that that there are very few organisms
Speaker 3: who could break it down. So we know fungi can,
Speaker 3: but fungi can break down almost anything, or at least
Speaker 3: some species of fungi can.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 3: So I think that that would probably not be a
Speaker 3: very nutritious way to go about augmenting your diet.
Speaker 2: Right now, to mention it's expensive, right, it would be expensive,
Speaker 2: like how much a kilogram? Twenty five hundred dollars. That's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I have no idea how much chicken
Speaker 2: costs a kilogram, but I'm thinking less, yeah, a little
Speaker 2: bit less, a bit less, Okay. I had to crunch
Speaker 2: some numbers because I live in America, and the only
Speaker 2: reference points I have for kilos are when there are
Speaker 2: headlines about people smuggling heroin in their suitcases or under
Speaker 2: two pays. But a kilo of chicken is two point
Speaker 2: two pounds, which is about half a whole roaster chicken,
Speaker 2: or about five dollars worth of chicken breasts, which is
Speaker 2: three hundred times as expensive as spider silk, probably even
Speaker 2: more actually, if you're like starving for spy droin and
Speaker 2: lazy and you just have it delivered on Postmates. Billy
Speaker 2: Marina wants to know how do spiders use their silk
Speaker 2: to fly? I think he's talking about believe, yeah, so ballooning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so basically, especially when they're small, you know, there's
Speaker 3: a nest, a nest of one hundred hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: little DBD spiders, and they got to spread out if
Speaker 3: they're going.
Speaker 2: To eat anything. So what happens is they usually go
Speaker 2: up into something.
Speaker 3: They lay a big line off the end, and when
Speaker 3: the wind gets up, they jump and their fate is
Speaker 3: now completely dependent on where they end up. But here
Speaker 3: in the spring, what happens is you can go out
Speaker 3: and see some of the fields and they look like
Speaker 3: they're coat of the spider silk because all these spiders
Speaker 3: have jumped and their lines are laying out across the
Speaker 3: like the sagebrush of the grass or something like that.
Speaker 3: And I've seen pictures along the coast of California where
Speaker 3: you see that because the marine layer comes in and
Speaker 3: you get drops for dew forming on that. So it
Speaker 3: looks like the whole entire thing is covered with spider
Speaker 3: silk because all these little guylines are laying out.
Speaker 2: Can't they get pretty high like ten thousand? Yeah, they've
Speaker 2: they've found them.
Speaker 3: I think they've found them clear into the thirty to
Speaker 3: forty I mean, the up as high as air as.
Speaker 2: The jets fly. How do they not run out of silk?
Speaker 2: They don't.
Speaker 3: They just put one thing and they'll let the wind
Speaker 3: get it. So it's like they're putting out a sale,
Speaker 3: so they use it like a sale.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, So it really is wherever the wind blows. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you got that right, You got that right. Okay, aswealth,
Speaker 2: Jennifer wants to know, Hi, how many animals did you
Speaker 2: consider before landing on these goats?
Speaker 3: Is not very many because the company we work with
Speaker 3: specifically focused on goats for a multitude of reasons, one
Speaker 3: being that these goats were called breed early, lactate early,
Speaker 3: so five months are sexually mature. Well, you breed them
Speaker 3: in five months later you have a goat producing milk,
Speaker 3: so in less than a year you've got a complete cycle.
Speaker 3: So that's a huge advantage. Yeah, and especially being here
Speaker 3: in Utah where dairy is a big business, we always
Speaker 3: get asked why goats and not cows. So the answer
Speaker 3: to that question is is number one, goat milk production
Speaker 3: per pound of feed is basically in goats as it
Speaker 3: is in cows. They don't produce as much. They're much
Speaker 3: easier to deal with. So a fifteen hundred pound cow
Speaker 3: doesn't want to go anywhere you kind of impact into
Speaker 3: a corner. They also are much more adaptable human orientation,
Speaker 3: So our kids shortly after they're born, after a couple
Speaker 3: of three days, are then fed by hand milk by hand,
Speaker 3: and I'll guarantee you they have no idea their goats.
Speaker 3: They think they're humans. So there really are easy to
Speaker 3: work with in terms of that, the waste is much
Speaker 3: less than it is with cows and makes it easier
Speaker 3: for cleanup.
Speaker 2: And that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: And last, but not least, my people will tell you
Speaker 3: that baby goats are much cuter than maybe cows.
Speaker 2: That's very factual. There's nothing cuter that a baby goat.
Speaker 2: It's a fact. Absolutely. Did you like, low key love
Speaker 2: getting to work with the goats? Were you like I
Speaker 2: never really realized that working with spiderbuts would lead me
Speaker 2: to getting to cuddle baby goats?
Speaker 3: No, not so much, because I raised sheep when I
Speaker 3: was when I was a kid, and then when my
Speaker 3: kids started growing up, we moved out and had a
Speaker 3: place out of town and they raise sheep, so I
Speaker 3: got to see baby lambs, you know, multiple times every year.
Speaker 3: So baby goats probably are cuter than baby lambs, but
Speaker 3: not by a lot.
Speaker 2: I'm going to do a pole because I think that
Speaker 2: that would be a very heated debate, to be honest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I certainly it's a It's a tough one
Speaker 3: because I certainly do like to like lambs, there's no
Speaker 3: doubt about it.
Speaker 2: Just do a transgendic one where we got a little
Speaker 2: bit of both. Yeah, yeah, right now. Okay, I took
Speaker 2: a Twitter pool and at press time it was baby
Speaker 2: goats in the leads sixty two percent. I regret not
Speaker 2: including baby spiders in the pole. So that's now a
Speaker 2: mystery that's just lost to time. Okay, Gregory o'conway wants
Speaker 2: to know, Dear Alward, can we use spider silk to
Speaker 2: make a kick ass parachute?
Speaker 3: The answer is yes. But what we're probably more interested
Speaker 3: in is the parachute lines, because one of the problems
Speaker 3: you have is is that, especially if you're dropping let's
Speaker 3: say a tang out of a cargo and you want
Speaker 3: to go more frequently than I think any of the
Speaker 3: DoD would like to believe, the parachute collapses because obviously
Speaker 3: it goes out, it tries to open, and then at
Speaker 3: the end it goes wham when it opens up and
Speaker 3: it collapses. So we see is that if we made
Speaker 3: the guidelines out of spider silk, when it hit that end,
Speaker 3: it would just stretch it so the parachute would no
Speaker 3: longer collapse. It would allow the guidelines to absorb all
Speaker 3: of that energy and then as we talk, it gets
Speaker 3: released as heat. So it's not going to go bouncing
Speaker 3: up and down like a trampoline. It's going to go
Speaker 3: down and then slowly come back up and keep the
Speaker 3: parachute from collapsing. Now, we may also want to do
Speaker 3: it for all the parachutes, but particularly those where you're
Speaker 3: dumping something heavy out. We could see this would be
Speaker 3: a huge advantage to what they have right now.
Speaker 2: And speaking of DoD stuff, what about armors things like that.
Speaker 3: We don't see spider silkas as from our perspective anyway,
Speaker 3: as the way to go for protective armor, particularly things
Speaker 3: like bulletproof vests. And the reason is it stretches too much,
Speaker 3: and that's what's unique about it, that's what makes it key.
Speaker 3: So my joke is when somebody asks, is I know
Speaker 3: I can make your bulletproof vest, he just stops the
Speaker 3: bullet on the wrong side of your chest. So that's
Speaker 3: not particularly useful.
Speaker 2: Also, any movies that you've seen with spiders or spider
Speaker 2: webs that you.
Speaker 3: Oh, oh, eight eight Legged Freaks. Eight Legged Freaks is
Speaker 3: a movie you have to see.
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 3: It's oh, it's it's the It's it's like the parody
Speaker 3: of every horror movie you've ever seen. Radioactivity. Guy has
Speaker 3: spiders there. They all become giant spiders. This little twelve
Speaker 3: year old kid sees it. He tries to go to
Speaker 3: the sheriff and tell the sheriff. The sheriff doesn't listen
Speaker 3: to the little kid. So these are loose destroying, you know,
Speaker 3: picking up trailer houses, chasing people down, having eggs and
Speaker 3: magically getting giant whatever else.
Speaker 2: And then toward the end.
Speaker 3: Somebody tells you that the little kid comes and says,
Speaker 3: you know, I know what's going on, and somebody says,
Speaker 3: share a fun. Don't you listen to the little kid?
Speaker 3: And so they finally managed to clear out. But it's
Speaker 3: like when it first came out. I took everybody in
Speaker 3: the lab for the movie. We went and I said,
Speaker 3: everybody has to come up with at least ten things
Speaker 3: that are absolutely totally false that they find in this movie,
Speaker 3: and trust me, we had lots more than ten.
Speaker 2: It was, it was. It's hilarious. It's absolutely hilarious. But
Speaker 2: those things are also delightful because they're so false, absolutely ly.
Speaker 3: I mean some people don't see if all, which is
Speaker 3: the unfortunate part here.
Speaker 2: Spiders just going about their business and the things that
Speaker 2: they're making naturally could literally save our lives, I hope.
Speaker 2: So so thanks spiders, Thank you spider Just get one
Speaker 2: of those little spider catchers, take them outside, let them
Speaker 2: go do their business, let them keep evolving. It's five
Speaker 2: hundred million years, that's right. The thing that you hate
Speaker 2: the most about your job or about spider silk, what's
Speaker 2: so either annoying or irksome or just troubling. Is there
Speaker 2: anything that you're just like, ugh, this sucks for us.
Speaker 2: I think it has.
Speaker 3: It has been heading toward the commercialization direction, just because
Speaker 3: it's been difficult to convince people that that it can
Speaker 3: have advantages over what they're currently using, particularly in the
Speaker 3: medical world. It's astounding to me that advances ever get
Speaker 3: made in medicine based on our experiences because these people,
Speaker 3: you know, if you say you got to have to
Speaker 3: go back to the FDA for approval, immediately it's off
Speaker 3: the table.
Speaker 2: They would rather have inferior products.
Speaker 3: So one, for instance, we've made a hernia mesh that
Speaker 3: is far superior to what they use right now, absolutely
Speaker 3: no question, but hernia meshes are off the table. There
Speaker 3: is not a company that were that we know of
Speaker 3: any that wants to touch it because lawsuits around around
Speaker 3: vaginal meshes failing. Hernia mesh is failing. Well, the reason
Speaker 3: they failed is because they're made out of lousy material. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but you talk to them and it's like, we're not
Speaker 3: touching it with a ten foot pole. We don't want
Speaker 3: to have to take on you know, we don't want
Speaker 3: to have to do the FDA testing, we don't want
Speaker 3: to deal with possible lawsuits. We don't want anything to
Speaker 3: do with it, so we'll keep using our lousy stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's that technology has advanced faster than maybe
Speaker 2: mindsets certainly acceptance. Yeah, but I think it's so great
Speaker 2: to know how it's made and that it's a protein
Speaker 2: structure that is so versatile and that it can be manufactured.
Speaker 2: I think it's just so unreal to people because it's
Speaker 2: so science fiction. Right, You're like, oh no, this is
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, like we can actually do this now. It's
Speaker 2: so exciting, right, And what about the best thing about
Speaker 2: spider Silk or your job? I think the best thing
Speaker 2: about my job.
Speaker 3: And I always say that you know it's coming to
Speaker 3: work and you know, having a realistic expectation that you're
Speaker 3: going to find something.
Speaker 2: New multiple times a year.
Speaker 3: I have to say that I other than a day,
Speaker 3: I have meetings all day, I would I have not
Speaker 3: dreaded a day coming to work since I started.
Speaker 2: For thirty years. For thirty years. You've got to get
Speaker 2: this cake, man, Yeah, you deserve it. You've got a
Speaker 2: great job. And where can people find out more about
Speaker 2: you or about your work or about spidy Tech.
Speaker 3: Certainly, spidery Tech has a website. We have a website
Speaker 3: on USU. If you just do Spidersilk USU, you'll get
Speaker 3: to our website, and we have a Facebook page. We're
Speaker 3: not quite as good on the on the social media
Speaker 3: side of things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to get a social media and yeah,
Speaker 2: that's right. I'm afraid it's passed me by. So it's
Speaker 2: you're not out at Coachella wearing a spider hat and
Speaker 2: no I.
Speaker 3: Am not, and I'm not tweeting to keep up with
Speaker 3: the president or anything aniles.
Speaker 2: Here or so hashtag spidy life. Yeah, well, thank you
Speaker 2: so much for doing this. That's such a joy. Enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: Enjoyed it? Okay, so ask smart people some silky questions
Speaker 2: because you'll never know what they know unless you ask.
Speaker 2: And I hope this has given you greater appreciation for
Speaker 2: our Leggi friends and this Halloween season, when you see
Speaker 2: a spider web decoration, just feel free to stop everyone
Speaker 2: around you inform them of the molecular engineering that goes
Speaker 2: into it. Maybe if you get a spider web in
Speaker 2: your face, you don't like cotton candy. That shit's expensive.
Speaker 2: So for more on the topics discussed, you can head
Speaker 2: over to my website. For links, it's Alleyward dot com
Speaker 2: slash ologies slash Spidronology and there are links to sponsors
Speaker 2: and codes in the show notes as well, and for
Speaker 2: merch there's a link at Alleyward dot com. Thank you
Speaker 2: Shannon Felt as Bonnie Dutch of the podcast You Are That,
Speaker 2: which is a hilarious podcast for managing that. Thank you
Speaker 2: to Aaron Talbert and Hannah Lippo for admitting the Facebook
Speaker 2: Ologies podcast group a few things live appearance wise, I'm
Speaker 2: keynoting Sycomcamp in Southern California on November eighth, and there
Speaker 2: may still be a few spots left in case you
Speaker 2: can convince your work or your lab or yourself that
Speaker 2: this conference is an important thing to attend to communicate science.
Speaker 2: You can go to Sycomcamp dot com. They have more
Speaker 2: details and it's November eight through tenth. The lineup is awesome.
Speaker 2: It includes Flash Forwards, Rose Eveleth and the Physics Girl
Speaker 2: Diana Cowen. Also on October seventeenth, it's the International Myloma
Speaker 2: Foundations Annual Comedy Benefit in LA and it's hosted by
Speaker 2: Raybermano and there are performances by Patton Oswald and A
Speaker 2: Man of Seals and Dimitri Martin and Kevin Neilan. And
Speaker 2: I'm hosting the Red Carpet live on the IMF Facebook page.
Speaker 2: And there'll be links to all this in the show
Speaker 2: notes or up at aliwarn dot com, slash Ologies slash Spidronology.
Speaker 2: And thank you to Shared Sleeper of the Mental health
Speaker 2: podcast My Good Bad Brain for assistant editing, and to
Speaker 2: the center of our webs Stephen Ray Morris of the
Speaker 2: per Cast and c Jurassic right for adhering the pieces
Speaker 2: together each week. And if you listen to the of
Speaker 2: the podcast, you know I tell you a secret. And
Speaker 2: this week's secret, Shannon and Bonnie stayed down here in
Speaker 2: LA and when they did, they left a loaf of
Speaker 2: sour dough bread. And I've just been slowly eating it
Speaker 2: piece by piece, by putting it in the microwave until
Speaker 2: it's all gooey, and then putting butter on it, and
Speaker 2: then putting salt on top of that, and just walking
Speaker 2: around eating this soggy piece of buttery bread. And I'll
Speaker 2: have you know, Shannon and Bonnie, I finished it today.
Speaker 2: I tore through it like a locust. Also, while I
Speaker 2: recorded all these asides, Grammy, my dog, is sitting next
Speaker 2: to me and she is wearing a spider themed sweater
Speaker 2: that I got her, So do keep an eye out.
Speaker 2: I will be posting a picture of her and the
Speaker 2: spider sweater on Instagram.
Speaker 5: Okay, byebye, Pacadermatology, hombiology, r doo, zoology, lithology, Yeah, technology, meteorologyology, apology, cereology, ethnology.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I'm not home right now. I'm workin in this
Speaker 2: spatter webs.
Speaker 4: Who'll leave a message and i'll call you a back