Spider Silk Makes Skin Bulletproof

The Bulletproof Spider Silk Matrix.

Talking about bulletproof skin seems to be quite fictitious and much like a superhero in a Hollywood film. But now the new artificial skin made by the dutch artist Jalila Essaidi makes human skin almost bulletproof.

Essaidi along with Forensic Genomics Consortium Netherlands created a swatch of nearly bulletproof skin by grafting spider silk between epidermis and dermis of the human skin. This swatch was able to repel a bullet fired at reduced speed from a .22 calibre rifle but it was not able to repel a bullet fired at normal speed from the same rifle. About this project Essaidi says-"With this work I want to show that safety in its broadest sense is a relative concept, and hence the term bulletproof. The work did stop some partially slowed bullets but not the one at full speed. But even with the skin pierced by the bullet the experiment is still a success. It leads to the conversation about how which form of safety would benefit society." So, it seems that for Essaidi the results were satisfactory.

These results have almost made the concept of bulletproof skin a reality. With such advancements in life sciences, if scientists invent bulletproof skin, it would not be much surprising and I hope that the invention would be done shortly.


[Via: DiscoveryNews]


Image Courtesy : Forensics Genomics Consortium of the Netherlands

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