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The Secrets of Silk · What's Your Problem?

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. Today's show has some classic plain vanilla innovation, as
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: people playing with lasers and trying to make new kinds
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: of materials, people trying to improve vaccine delivery, people trying
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: to reduce food waste. But today's show also has some
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: kinds of innovation that we don't hear so much about,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: like thousands of years of selective breeding of caterpillars, also
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: millions of years of caterpillar evolution that have created this
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: amazing super thin, super strong fiber that the caterpillar spins
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: into a cocoon basically by doing three D printing, Which
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: does it even count as innovation if a caterpillar does it?
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go with yes. For the purposes of
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: this shoe, of this moment, I'm going to say yes.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is What's Your Problem, the
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: show where I talk to people who are trying to
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: make technological progress. My guest today is Fiorenzo Omenetto. He's
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: a professor of biomedical engineering at Tufts University and he
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: studies silk. Fiorenzo's problem is this, how do you turn
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: a fabric people have been using for thousands of years
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: into useful cutting edge materials. Fiorenzo's background is in physics
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: and optics, but he runs what's known as the Silk Lab.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: He and his colleagues take natural silk, isolate the key protein,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: and use it to create new useful stuff. Fiorenzo got
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: into silk one day about twenty years ago when he
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: ran into his colleague David Kaplan in the hall at work.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: David handed him something that looked like a little piece
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: of plastic, but that turned out, of course to be silk.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: So David is responsible for me, for me working with silk.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: So my background is really technical, and I come from
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: material science laser physics, and with this background, I join
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: a biomedical engineering department, which is already sort of like
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: a leap of faith.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: If you will, you're you're kind of a weirdo there, Yeah,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: I suppose, I suppose let's just stay orthogonal. Yes, that's
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: a h I've been orthogonal in a lot of settings.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: I suppose, right.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Orthogonal too, orthogonal to a lot of sex.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Sorry, yes, orthogonal too. Yes, And we had a conversation
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: in the hall. David's a tissue engineer, and and then
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: the premise of tisser engineering is finding biocompatible materials that
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: can enter the body and can serve as scaffolding for
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: cells to rebuild our tissues. So we're in the hallway
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: and he presents me with this like little piece of
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: classic that was supposed to be a tissue engineering scaffold
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: for a replacement CORNEA. Okay, but the cells weren't able
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: to grow inside of it, And so said, can you
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: can you maybe use your lasers to poke some holes
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: in it so that the cells can grow in and
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: then if they permeate this, then they can regrow the
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: corn it. So I took this this piece of plastic,
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: I took it to the lab and I put a
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: laser beam on it, and I lost the laser beam.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: When I put the laser beam on this little piece
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  Speaker 2: of plastic, I couldn't see the spot and an and
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: to an optics geek like me, that means that the
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: surface is incredibly smooth. It means that there's no scattering
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: and this and this surface is very beautiful from an
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: optical perspective.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: When you say you lost it, you mean it just
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: kind of disappeared on there, like you didn't see a
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: little red dot or whatever.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Is that?
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: What that means.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: That is exactly what it means. And generally you see
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  Speaker 2: the red dot when you have when you have some
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: roughness that gives you the scattering and makes the spot visible.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: And so that one question led to the other, and
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: we started doing optics with it, and we started doing
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: like these holograms and materials out of what turned out
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: to be silk.
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  Speaker 1: Right, what what are your first ideas? So you realize, oh,
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  Speaker 1: this is silk, and weirdly it has this property of
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: being crazy smooth. What do you think about doing with it?
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Once you realize that.
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  Speaker 2: You basically have a construction material that starts from water
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  Speaker 2: in a protein that floats around, and then you can
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  Speaker 2: turn it into multiple forms, so film, sponges, blocks, what
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  Speaker 2: have you. You can print it, you can spray it,
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  Speaker 2: you can predprinted, painted, et cetera. And all of this
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  Speaker 2: is in a format that is edible, implantable, and that,
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  Speaker 2: as we discovered as we went along, that also stabilizes
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  Speaker 2: biological activity and you know, acts as a preservative for
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: molecules that otherwise need to be refrigerated. Oh. Interest, So
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  Speaker 2: this is where things diverged.
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  Speaker 1: And there are a lot of basically biological applications medical
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  Speaker 1: and sort of medical adjacent applications because this benign, naturally
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: occurring protein that is the essence of silk, has these
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  Speaker 1: wonderful properties.
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  Speaker 2: That's right, That's right, And so we started doing we
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  Speaker 2: started doing things for fun. I mean, we started looking
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  Speaker 2: at the optical properties. We started doing optical devices, and
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: we started doing imprinting, and we looked at where were
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: the limits of fabrication that we could push.
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  Speaker 1: How much cool and useful stuff could you make with silk?
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  Speaker 2: Basically, that's right. And there's also you know, the wow factor,
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: because you know, it's a very different format than having
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  Speaker 2: silk that looks like this.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Yes, now you're holding up a silk scarf.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Now I'm holding up a silk carf. Yes.
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  Speaker 1: So let's I want to get to a lot of
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: the applications that have come out of your work. But
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: before we do that, I just want to talk about
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: silk for a few minutes, because it's interesting and it's
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: sort of the core of why you've been working on
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  Speaker 1: this for almost twenty years, right, So, like, why is
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: silk so amazing?
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: I wish I had like a like a one liner.
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  Speaker 1: Let's talk about it. Let's just talk about silk tell
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: me about silk.
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  Speaker 2: So silk, particularly textile silk, is one of the most
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  Speaker 2: engineered natural materials that there is. Legend has it, you know,
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  Speaker 2: it wasn't quite the apple that fell from the tree,
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  Speaker 2: but it was the cocoon that fell from the tree
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  Speaker 2: while a princess was drinking tea. Yes, and then this
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  Speaker 2: lustrous fiber came off.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: This is in China, more than a thousand years ago.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, we know there's the myth, but we know
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  Speaker 1: that they've been making silk in China for more than
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: a thousand years certainly, right.
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  Speaker 2: But most importantly, I think that the thing that is
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: unappreciated is that the bombax morey caterpillar has been domesticated
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  Speaker 2: for all of this time, with all the while the
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  Speaker 2: intrigue of the you know, of my line of silkworms
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  Speaker 2: produces a very fine silk. This other line of silkworms
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  Speaker 2: doesn't do as well. And so the finest products that
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  Speaker 2: you can get you get from a certain farm. This
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  Speaker 2: was all the intrigue of optimizing, right.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, it's innovation, right, There are literally centuries of innovation,
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  Speaker 1: and just to just to say for I think most
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  Speaker 1: people know, but like there's a particular worm.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: The silkworm is whatever the larval form of a particular moth, right,
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  Speaker 1: if I'm getting that right. And it spins its cocoon
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  Speaker 1: out of this material that is basically silk or was
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: what they used to make silk, right, And it only
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: eats the mulberry tree bark or something right right, prefers
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  Speaker 1: the mulberry tree bark.
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  Speaker 2: A majestically picky eater. Yes, And it's remarkable and.
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  Speaker 1: As I mean, as I understand it, the optimization it's
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: actually they have through you know, breeding basically over time,
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  Speaker 1: have made it so that the moths make more silkworms.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: You get more silkworms, you get more silk, you know,
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  Speaker 1: more quickly. Right, So it already comes to us as
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  Speaker 1: this incredibly optimized thing. There's nature has done a tremendous
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: amount of work, and then people in China for a
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  Speaker 1: thousand years have done more.
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  Speaker 2: Right, that's right, And then it propagated all over the place.
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  Speaker 2: And it's really very technical. And so this agricultural crop
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  Speaker 2: the kids textiles that are very prized for their luster,
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  Speaker 2: for their look, for their thermal properties, for their durability, right.
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  Speaker 1: Like great long underwear, right high right ers nice scar.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely, there's like all sorts of all sorts of beautiful things.
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  Speaker 2: But they come they come in this format. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: and I'm holding up a cocoon right now, they come
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  Speaker 2: in this format.
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  Speaker 1: Is there? Is that a real cocoon? Or is that
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  Speaker 1: like a model?
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  Speaker 2: No? No, no, this is a real cocoon.
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  Speaker 1: Wait, hold it up again. So it's let's talk about it.
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  Speaker 2: Let me find here we go, let me find one.
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  Speaker 1: That is how many cocoons do you have on your desk?
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  Speaker 1: You just put one down and picked up another one?
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  Speaker 2: We have We are full of cocoons. So you're holding it.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, tell me about it. It's white, it's white, white, white, right,
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  Speaker 1: it's snow white. It looks on the picture.
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  Speaker 2: So it's a snow wide, giant giant, a giant bean.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's bigger than a bean. I'm trying to think,
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  Speaker 1: what is that size? Like if you smushed a ping
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  Speaker 1: pong ball into an oblong shape, would it be about
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  Speaker 1: that size?
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  Speaker 2: How about that size?
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  Speaker 1: And you're holding it by a thread? Is that a
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  Speaker 1: little silken thread that you're holding up? I can't even
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  Speaker 1: see it. It's invisible.
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  Speaker 2: I'm trying to figure out there you can kind of
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  Speaker 2: see it now maybe.
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  Speaker 1: I mean it's cool that it's invisible.
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  Speaker 2: It's magic.
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  Speaker 1: It's like it's like a spider web, right, in fact,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: spider webs. In fact, spider webs are quite similar. But
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  Speaker 1: it's hard to read spiders, right, that's what I read.
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  Speaker 2: So spiders cannot be domesticated, but but caterpillars can. There
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  Speaker 2: are billions of these cocoons, Yeah, there are, there are.
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  Speaker 2: There are a lot, a lot a lot of these cocoons.
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  Speaker 2: But the remarkable thing is that each cocoon is an
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  Speaker 2: engineering wonder. Because if you take the cocoon and you
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  Speaker 2: unwind it, so you wash the glue away that the
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  Speaker 2: worms used to keep it together, or the caterpillars used
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  Speaker 2: to keep this together, and you pull, you have almost
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  Speaker 2: one kilometer of an interrupted thread, so ten micron thread
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  Speaker 2: that is composed by two silk fibers that are held together.
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  Speaker 2: The ten microns means about it ten to the diameter
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  Speaker 2: of your hair. Each fiber is composed by two individual
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  Speaker 2: fibers that are held together by that glue that I
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  Speaker 2: mentioned before. And because there are two spinning glands in
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  Speaker 2: the caterpillar and then and then all held together in
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  Speaker 2: this non woven format that is extremely resilient. It's something
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  Speaker 2: that you just can't tear and this and think there's
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  Speaker 2: no weave in here. It's just the worm that is
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  Speaker 2: building up layer by layer by layer as it's building
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  Speaker 2: this cocoon.
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  Speaker 1: It's like additive manufacturing. It's like three D printing.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is absolutely that this is a biological three
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  Speaker 2: D printer. It's a filamentary three D printer that builds
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: a cocoon from the inside to I.
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  Speaker 1: Mean, yeah, yeah, the caterpillars on the inside doing it.
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  Speaker 1: So okay, So there's this incredible natural context to begin
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: with this incredible thing that the silkworm does. And then
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  Speaker 1: on top of that, we have the kind of innovation
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: and optimization of whatever one thousand plus years of farming
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  Speaker 1: and you know, commercial and then you kind of walk
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: onto the stage and you realize, oh, this stuff is
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: really cool and you start playing with it. And let's
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  Speaker 1: talk about some of the some of the things that
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: have come out of it. Right, it's not purely academic work.
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  Speaker 1: There have been commercial spin offs.
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  Speaker 2: So the important qualities of the of the material fabrication
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: process that open up an endless kit of material wonder
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: are the fact, the end formats of material you can eat,
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: you can implant in the body. You can mix things
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  Speaker 2: into this glass of water and silk, mix things that
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: are delicate biologically, and you can preserve them, and then
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: you can control the degradation of the materials. You can
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: dip them in water and they dissolve immediately, or you
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: can dip in water and they'll stay put for years.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Just depending on how you build it.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Essentially, how you put the proteins together. Imagine a bunch
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: of a bunch of little lego pieces that are floating around,
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: and depending on how hard you press it, the material
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: lasts more or less. And you can control, you know,
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: the sizes of the bricks that you put in the
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: solution and how they're pressed together. And so to a
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: material scientist, having these functional aspects in the material just
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: is mind blowing because you can start really imagining. What
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: if you look at all the materials that surround you
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: and you start saying, well, what if I could plant
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: this in my garden, What if I could eat it?
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: What if I could put biological communicators inside of what
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: if I could put chemistries inside here that are very
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: difficult to put in by other means, so then this
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  Speaker 2: just opens up a world of craziness, and so.
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  Speaker 1: Of the delightful craziness, right, good craziness.
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  Speaker 2: I think the thing that I still find myself very
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: surprised by is that after now nearly twenty years of
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: working with this material, I think, I think I'm still
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: as excited about the potential of this material as I
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: was on day one.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Still to come on the show. Using silk to find
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: a better way to deliver vaccines, and also using silk
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: to help preserve fruits and vegetables, also more things to
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: do with silk. What's something that is in the world
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: based on your work.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: One of the companies that is called Vaccess is now
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: using silk based technology to do micro needle patches with
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: therapy that doesn't need to be refrigerated. So I imagine
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: just putting on a band aid rather than going took
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: place to get an injection and not having to worry
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: about storing your therapy in the fridge.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Particularly important in the developing world. Right we take the
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: cold chain for granted here, and yes it's a hassle
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: to go to the pharmacy and get a shot, but
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: like there are parts of the world where like, you know,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: the vaccine has to be called from the time it's
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: made until it goes into your arm. Essentially, Yes, so
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: it has to be in a truck and a ship
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: and everywhere. It has to stay cold, and you have
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: to have power, and there are big parts of the
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: world where that just doesn't exist, right, So it actually
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: is a real problem on a global scale.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: I would argue also that it potentially could become even
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: more profitable. I believe that there's a lot of opportunities
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: still out there for these classes of material to be
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: to generate an incredible amount of revenue.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, do you mean just because it's cheaper, because
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: if you don't have to keep it cold, it's more efficient,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: or like what makes you think of or just because
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: people prefer what makes like I'm interested? I just what
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: makes you think of that? Here in the conversation.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: I think that the functional surprise is what makes this
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: an appealing product, and it makes it economically viable. I
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: think that having trying to substitute materials one for one
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: is very difficult given the sophistication of what we have today.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: But I think that if your material manages to do
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: something unexpected that brings more value to a.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Person saying it's not just not the cold chain, it's
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: you don't have to get a shot, you just put
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: this sticker on your arm.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: It's a collection of things. And so the jury is
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: out of whether this is true or not. I think
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: the opportunity is big, but I see also that it
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: requires an enormous amount of dedication and it requires entrepreneurship.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: And that that side of it is clearly not not
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: your side. It seems as you're talking about.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: It, Well, it can't be.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: There are there are professors who also start companies.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, but I think that I'm a big believer of
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: the fact that you have to dedicate your full attention
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: to something to bring it at ats maximum levels.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: So there's there's another thing that that people are developing
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: based on on the work on your work and your
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: colleagues work for for for vocal vocal cord, right what
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: they call it vocal folds, but it's basically vocal cords.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Tell me about that.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: So for example, one of the one of the examples
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: is that in certain cases, when you lose mechanical properties
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: in your vocal fold, your your vocal cords are not
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: able to vibrate anymore and you and you lose your
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: capacity to speak. And so one of the one of
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: the strategies would be to restore the strength of the
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: vocal fold so that you give mechanical ford it to
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: to that. So we studied this formulation where imagine that
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: you have a dense injectable jello that comes and stays
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: and stays put in some place and mixes with your
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: native tissue and makes it more fur I see.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: So one of the companies that took the gel technology
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: out studied this and they came up with an injectable
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: format that restores the mechanical properties of the fold and
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: actually gives the capacity to the patients to speak. Again.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: This is an FDA approved therapy, so it works. So
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: it worked. So this is something that you can get today.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Food preservation, somebody's working on using some silk based technology
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: to make fresh food stay good longer. Tell me about that.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: So it turns out that the silk liquid is very
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: good at coating objects. And if you take, for example,
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: of strawberry and you dip it in water and silk
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: so coats the strawberry with a thin layer of material
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: that acts as a fruit preservative. And it's very effective
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: to prolong the shelf life at room temperature of materials
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: by a week or a couple of weeks. And then
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: I guess it depends on what you use it on,
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: and every food as its own story. At the time,
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: we in the lab, we tried it on bananas and
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: on strawberries, and we saw that at room temperature we
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: could keep bananas and strawberries fresh for a extra week,
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: ten days or something like that.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: And so where is that sort of product in the
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: arc of commercialization, this silk based fruit, you know, preservative.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Honestly, I think that this is a question for the
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: company itself, but I know that some product has been
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: successfully applied to leafy greens, and I think that the
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: that the use case there is the ability to enhance logistics, give.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: You more time to get the greens from the farm
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: to the table.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: Exactly, from from point A to point B and without refrigeration,
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: which is a big deal.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, tell me what you're working on.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: Now. What are we working on now? We're working on
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: sense a lot. We have friends that design proteins that
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: are very very sensitive and very very specific. So there
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: are possibilities of giving formats to say, things for example,
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: that detect hormones. So one of the things that we
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: did recently was to make an ink with a design
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: or a protein if you will, that was very sensitive
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: and very specific to human estrogen receptor two, which is
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: one of the one of the hormones that is responsible
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: for breast cancer. So you start imagining things like painting
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: and the inside of a bra so that you have
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: a monitor of recurrence for example, of or you have
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: a monitor for breast cancer. We did the same thing
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: with toxins like bochulin and hepatitis beat, and so all
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: of these things become very powerful when you have them
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: in these different formats that are very unexpected.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: So the core thing you have ultimately with the silk
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: is this benign stabilizing force, Right, That's the thing you're
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: flying in all these different detection settings. Is that, right,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: a way to take whatever essentially detectors, these protein detectors
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: that might whatever decompose in other settings. You're stabilizing them
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: in a very kind of safe, benign way. That seems
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: like the core thing that is happening in all these
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: different use cases you're describing is that, right, That is true.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: But the other thing that is very important is that
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: you stabilize these and that's the functional part, but then
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: you shape it, and the shapes are very very technological.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: So the other thing that we're working on that is
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: very exciting is how to control silk and the nanoscale
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: and actually have these things very precisely localized, and that
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: can lead to really nice, nice interfaces with for example,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: with semiconductors.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: Say a little more about that one.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: So we had we had a recent paper where we
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: showed it in a transistor. We can put a thin
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: layer of silk within the transistor and we can use
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: the state of silk to change the way that the
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: transistors switches.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Huh, switches, which is the fundamental thing a transistor does,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: goes from on off.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Basically, that's right. So so if you can, if you
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: could imagine this multiplied by a Tralian transistors, Yeah, it
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: would be a very powerful way to sense things, for example,
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: or to silk or channelized things. Yeah, why not.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: So just to land the main part of the conversation here,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: you've been working with silk for almost twenty years. Like
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: if you sort of zoom out and look at the
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: big picture arc of your work, what do you come away.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: With there are two two main things. I think one
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: is a thing that comes from wonder and surprise. And
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: I think that the more you look at things around
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: you and you and you interpret and you're amazed by
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: the things around you, the more you learn about them,
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: the more you the more inspired you are, I would say.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: And then the other thing that I would say is
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: that natural systems, natural materials have an unbelievable degree of sophistication,
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: of hierarchical sophistication. And by that I mean they are
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: so exquisitely engineered at all scales to provide very simultaneous
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: functions that are technologically incredibly relevant, you know. So like
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: the way that they manage energy, the way that they
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: repel infection, the way that they are super hydrophobic, the
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: way that they're resilient, way by being ultra light, their
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: ability to keep warm and to keep cold depending on
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: the need. It's just it's just an endless the way
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: that they self heal, it's like an endless stream of
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: things that is incredible. Nature has a lot of ideas
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: to do really smart things, to do really meaningful things,
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: to do profound things, and to do very profitable things.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the light ground.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Let's finish with the lightning round. What's one thing about
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: lasers that you wish more people understood.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: How profoundly different they are from a light bulb?
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Huh, just tay a little more. I feel like I
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: should know that better. Tell me.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: Lasers are light and we kind of take for granted
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: that this light travels in a travels in the line
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: and gives you a spot. And they're the same. It's
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: the same light that you get from a light bulb,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: except for the light from the light bulb goes all
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: over the place where the laser is directional. And that
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: fact that the laser is directional is is amazing material
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: magic why it gives it order. So it's very very
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: ordered light. You take something that is chaotic and you
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: make it keep step with time and with space. Wow.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: And it's very important because it's at the basis of
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: a lot of things, including self driving cars that don't
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: smash it two into one another, for example, in some
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: in some cases.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: What's your favorite use of a laser in fiction, in
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: a movie, in a book.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Oh, obviously laser being on sharks, Austin power. It's I mean,
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: it's er evils, it is doctor Good.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: So, as I understand that you were an Oppenheimer fellow
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: at Los Alamos, I was, what do you think of
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: the movie Oppenheimer?
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: Oh gosh, how much time do we have? This is
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: not a lightning question. It was it was if I
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: liked it.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: It's complicated when you were at Less almost twenty years ago,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: like the get you catch any Manhattan Project vibes? Or
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: was it just kind of a relic?
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: No. I think that it's very present, that the history
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: is palpable in in the lab. And I think that
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: one of one of the best things is to go
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: to the museum and see their guest books and see
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: and see what people write on the guest book after
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: they've gone through the whole story of the Manhattan Project,
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: and it's very The range of comments is astounding. It's
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: from you know, international Atomic Agency officers to senators, to
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: a high school football team to Japanese visitors, you know,
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: and and it was at least very much in the
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: culture of the lab. And I think that there's a
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: I can't see how how it wouldn't be.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, true that you wrote a vespa. True, you still
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: write a vespa not often.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: I do my own one, but it's gathering a lot
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: of dust.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: You think vespas are overrated or underrated?
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: Ah, that's that's I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna. I'm
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: not gonna even comment on that. I think they I
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: think I think they look great.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: You runzo Omenetto runs the Silk Lab at Tufts University.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Today's show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Cheng. It was
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: edited by Lyddy jeene Kott and engine heared by Sarah Bruguer.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Bothstein, and we'll be back next week with
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: another episode of What's Your Problem.