Spider silk is the strongest, most durable, most elastic fiber in the world. It’s 5 to 6 times stronger than steel by weight. A strand that could circle the globe would weigh less than a bar of soap!

Given these remarkable properties, scientists have studied it closely.

Spiders make silk with their spinnerets, tiny organs beneath their abdomens.

Before it’s spun, the silk is a gel of liquid proteins. The spinnerets remove water from the gel and extrude it through an acid bath, aligning the proteins into a solid fiber.

Each spinneret has multiple spigots. And each of those makes a single filament that the spider combines to create different silks: fine or coarse, sticky or not.

Scientists haven’t been able to re-create spider silk chemically, so they’ve enlisted another silk-spinning creature to help: the silkworm.

While spiders are almost impossible to domesticate, the silkworm has thrived in captivity for centuries. Its silk is beautiful but comparatively weak.

So scientists turned the worms into real-life Peter Parkers, giving them genes from the spider.

These genetically modified silkworms spin their cocoons as always, from a single kilometer-long strand—but this time of spider silk.

Other scientists have developed genetically modified bacteria that organize proteins similar to how spider spinnerets work.

With these developments, we may soon have fabric and other materials with the amazing properties of spider silk.