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piqer for: Global finds Technology and society
I have worked in both University and Private sector labs and studied biology at UT Austin.
After leaving academic research I helped form Prophase BioStudios and built a laboratory out of a local Hackerspace.
Using the laboratory at Prophase BioStudios I started doing my own independent experiments that led me to create my Biomanufacturing company, Portunus.
My interests are primarily in biotechnology, particularly in the realms of fabrication and human enhancement.
Overcoming Spiders To Make Silk More Accessible
When developing new products, the ability to manufacture a material with a complex chemical structure using biology has a lot of value in lowering costs and shortening R&D times. If a living system is able to perform a complex series of chemical reactions to produce a material, then it can potentially save on the costs of reagents as well as offer researchers a starting point from which to begin research on similar material processes.
Recently, the greatest hurdle to producing spider silk, the spiders, has been overcome with the use of bacteria. The very high molecular weight of the monomer that composes spider silk makes chemical synthesis of the spider silk polymer very difficult. However, by using microorganisms to produce them, scientists at Washington University have managed to outsource the solution to that problem as well as overcome the problems of cannibalism and aggression among spiders.
Ultimately, this combination of biomimicry (mimicking life) and biomanufacturing allows humans to make full use of the materials that nature has already evolved and provide positive results without having to start from scratch.
