New Opportunities for an Ancient Material

Abstract

Insight into Silks: Silkworms have been cultivated for thousands of years and their silk has been used to make fabrics for clothing, bed sheets, shirts, dresses, and for other applications like sutures. Spider silk is harder to harvest, and thus has not found such widespread use, but its fantastic combination of properties has made it a tempting material to study in detail. Omenetto and Kaplan (p. 528 ) review our understanding of silk chemistry, the limitations in being able to reconstitute silks and to generate them synthetically, and a range of applications that have been developed using silk materials.