In an ever-changing and logarithmically progressing world, technological advancement and continued aggressive industrialization often blur the line between good and bad. As we strive for progress, the environmental toll of conventional manufacturing and material use becomes increasingly apparent; it is more important now than ever to shift our focus towards sustainability and accelerate the application of alternative biomaterials.

Biomaterials, derived from renewable biological sources, offer a promising solution to many of the ecological challenges we face today. Unlike traditional materials that rely heavily on finite resources and energy-intensive processes, biomaterials are renewable, biodegradable, and less energy-hungry. Sustainability through biomaterials hinges on their ability to reduce environmental impact at every stage of their life cycle. From production to disposal, these materials have immense potential to minimize carbon footprints and reduce pollution.

A circular economy also arises from the use of biomaterials, emphasizing reuse, recycling, and regeneration. Biomaterials can be repurposed or recycled into new products, minimizing waste. More than that, biomaterials offer socioeconomic benefits as well. Locally sourced or synthetically generated renewable materials can boost regional economies and create jobs in agriculture, research, and manufacturing. This reduces reliance on global supply chains, enhancing resilience against political disruptions.

Despite obvious benefits, alternative biomaterials still face many challenges in scalability and application versatility. Our project aims to address these issues through establishing a platform for carbon-negative spider silk production that is sustainable, versatile, and scalable.

For more information on our project's sustainable development impact, visit sustainable .

Spider silk has been proven by extensive research to be a remarkable natural material known for its extraordinary properties; It has an unmatched mechanical strength that is 5x tougher than Kevlar and 3x more flexible than nylon, making it one of the most durable materials found in nature. More than that, spider silk’s diversity (7 types of silk produced per spider across 41,000 species, each with different properties.) makes it extremely versatile and suitable for a wide range of applications.

There are two main challenges facing spider silk production and utilization right now:

Our project, SAC, aims to address these two main challenges in order to accelerate spider silk's real-world usage as an alternative biomaterial.

To overcome the bottleneck, we established a Standardized AI-Powered Platform for Carbon-Sequestering Spider Silk Production, otherwise known as SAC. The name SAC is inspired by spider egg sacs, which are woven cocoons made of spider silk that protects them from predators.

SAC can be broken down into three major parts:

1. Generative Personalized Spider Silk (GPSS): A Software Tool for Customized Spider Silk Sequence Generation

   The Protein Folding Problem has long been attributed to the lack of understanding of a protein’s function; this same problem plagues spider silk protein production and application. However, through current advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) models such as Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), our team was able to create a software tool that can generate sequences with customized mechanical properties, personalizing spider silk for any use case.

   For detailed information on how we created this tool, please visit software.

2. Sustainable Carbon-Sequestering Production of Spider Silk

   With a generated custom spider silk sequence, we can now synthesize and produce it with our specially designed production platform. Understanding the importance of sustainable manufacturing, our bioreactors useuses industrial waste (a mixture of molasses wastewater & crude glycerol) as a carbon-source to grow silk-producing BLR(DE3) E. coli.

   Also, to verify our platform’s carbon capturing capabilities, we created a Life-cycle Analysis (LCA) model that considers the overall carbon-capturing ability of our platform as well as its economic benefits to companies interested in using or investing in our product.

3. Post-Processing, Applications & Recycling

   After production, spider silk protein is purified and subject to post-processing for various applications. 3 different post-processing methods are used: spinning for fibers, dialysis-induced gelation for hydrogel, and film casting. In the future, more post-processing methods can be devised based on different desired use cases.

   Spider silk materials can also be easily recycled in two different ways:

   1. Using organic solvents such as acetone to break down spider silk based fibers, gel, and film into its fundamental building blocks to be reused in products.
   2. Using strong acid such as HCL to further degrade spider silk materials to be fed backed into our bioreactor as carbon source.

   More than just the recycling and reuse of silk materials, our bioreactor processed wastewater can also be recycled and used in other processes like irrigation, energy production, and more.