Today I found an intriguing article about spider silk to be used as an artificial muscle. This is a
very significant development who have lost muscle usage due to accident or muscle atrophy(where your muscle wastes away and becomes weaker. It usually happens when you have a certain type of disease. For example cancer, aids and other diseases). The human muscle contracts and expands allowing us to move, much like this spider silk has the ability to mimic the contractions of a muscle when doused. But this happens only once. To expand once again it must be dried and stretched back again. Spider silk contracts up to fifty percent, and is known as a super contraction. If you wrapped a thread of spider silk around your finger and doused it, you finger would turn blue immediately, from the extremity of the contraction. Scientists have also found a second type of movement for the spider silk called Cyclic Contractions. This type of movement can instantly stretch back to
normal, the only problem with it is that it doesn't contract too much, only one or two percent. Cyclic contractions are closer to the human muscle, though, than spider silk ones, because the human muscle only contracts ten or twenty percent. For smaller muscles spider silk may be appropriate, although for bigger ones it may be a problem, because of it's dramatic contractions.I personally hope that they will over come these small problems and manage to create a fake muscle, for those who will need it. This invention could help tons of people, and make a big difference in their lives.
~Swimmer/writerGirl.
Sources:
Muscle Atrophy-Wiki
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This blog is very interesting and well detailed. I love how you included examples and made me visualize everything. I never new that spider silk can be used as a muscle! Cool blog!
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