Spider Silk Makes Great Microchips That Dissolve in the Human Body

Spider silk is pretty amazing stuff. Pound for pound, it’s as strong as steel and more durable than Kevlar. It can be stretched to incredible lengths, but it’s no more cumbersome than cotton or nylon. Because it’s so awesome, scientists have long been searching for good ways to synthesize the stuff (it’s not exactly easy to milk spiders in any meaningful quantity), and they’ve made some good progress. Thanks to the latest work from biomedical engineer Fiorenzo Omenetto of Tufts University in Boston and Nolwenn Huby from the CNRS Institut de Physiques de Rennes in France, they’ll have a little extra motivation to get it done soon.