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Is spider web really stronger than steel?
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Is spider web really stronger than steel?

15 insights saved from this video by @science
  1. @science· Physics
    The spinning duct transforms protein solution through shear, narrowing, water removal, acidification, and molecular alignment.
  2. @science· Physics
    A one-square-centimeter spider-silk rope could support 60,000 newtons, roughly the weight of a fully grown African elephant.
  3. @science· Physics
    In 1709, Francois Xavier Bon collected hundreds of spider egg sacs, boiled and combed them, then spun them into stockings.
  4. @science· Physics
    Natural spider silk costs roughly $7 million per kilogram, about 50 times the price of gold.
  5. @science· Physics
    Farming spiders fails as an industry: they cannibalize one another, need substantial space, and cannot be reliably milked.
  6. @science· Physics
    Darwin’s bark spider silk reaches 520 megajoules per cubic meter, versus 50 for Kevlar and 170 for ultra-high-strength steel.
  7. @science· Physics
    Equal-mass, equal-length ropes can make silk withstand roughly twice the force of steel despite silk’s lower strength per area.
  8. @science· Physics
    PiggyBac recognizes only TTAA, a four-letter sequence so common in silkworm DNA that precise insertion cannot be controlled.
  9. @science· Physics
    Exactly how spider silk proteins assemble inside the spinning duct remains unresolved, making laboratory recreation difficult.
  10. @science· Physics
    CRISPR-Cas9 uses a guide matching about 20 DNA letters to cut one precise location and copy donor DNA into the repair.
  11. @science· Physics
    Scientists exploit piggyBac by keeping its end sequences and replacing the DNA between them with a chosen gene, including spider-silk genes.
  12. @science· Physics
    Final stretching aligns spidroins: hydrogen-bonded nanocrystalline sheets add strength, while amorphous regions provide stretch.

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