eGFI – Student Blog » Artificial Honeybee Silk a Promising New Material

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Artificial Honeybee Silk a Promising New Material

Posted on February 11th, 2010 by axb

Apis_mellifera_flying

Researchers from the Materials Science and Engineering branch of CSIRO (the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) in Australia have found a way to artificially produce honeybee silk. Due to its heavily coiled protein structure, honeybee silk is even stronger than that produced by spiders and other insects. Potential uses for this new super silk range from textiles to lightweight composite materials for marine or aviation purposes to artificial ligaments. Now that’s the bees knees!

[PopSci]

Honeybee image: Muhammad Mahdi Karim (www.micro2macro.net)/Wikipedia

Filed under: Biomedical, Materials, e-News

Tags: Biomimicry, Materials

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2 Responses to “Artificial Honeybee Silk a Promising New Material”

eGFI – Student Blog » Mole Nominated as “Nature’s Best Engineer”, on March 18th, 2010 at 1:17 pm Said:

[...] Today, engineers are frequently looking to nature for elegant design solutions in the growing field of biomimicry. [...]
eGFI – Student Blog » More Problems Solved Thanks to Biomimicry, on May 13th, 2010 at 5:36 pm Said:

[...] produces amazing designs. We have reported on the robotic arm based on an elephant trunk, artificial honeybee silk, and biofuels inspired by frog foam. Now biomimicry is tackling the problems of cargo [...]

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Artificial Honeybee Silk a Promising New Material

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