Spider silk is an unparalleled material: It’s strong and tough, yet also lightweight and flexible. But getting spiders to mass-produce their silk for commercial purposes has proven nearly impossible.

Spider silk is prized for its unrivaled strength and toughness. But figuring out a way to mass-produce it is no easy feat. Spiders cannot be put to work to pump out the fibers the way silkworms can: ...

Spider silk—six times tougher than Kevlar and stronger than steel—has now been produced by an unexpected source. Spider silk is a biological protein fiber spun by spiders. Many of these fibers have ...

Silkworms have been genetically engineered with CRISPR to produce pure spider silk for the first time. The worms could offer a scalable way to create things like surgical thread or bulletproof vests ...

Scientists in China have synthesized spider silk from genetically modified silkworms, producing fibers six times tougher than the Kevlar used in bulletproof vests. The study, published September 20 in ...

Tougher than steel, lighter than cotton, and stubbornly elusive to produce. For decades, spider silk has been the material science has long promised but never quite delivered at scale. Now, a Michigan ...

The other day I dove headfirst into a spiderweb while half-asleep inside my camper van. Screams aside, the logical part of me marveled at how fast a single creepy-crawly had woven such an ...