Spider Man is for real: The Dutch combine spider webs with human skin, makes bullet proof skin

Human skin has been bio-engineered to include spider silk.  Scientists in the Netherlands then fired a bullet at it.  Turns out it’s bullet proof!

Don’t get too excited, it was only a .22 caliber bullet.  But it shows promise, after all spider’s silk is the strongest thing in nature.

https://youtu.be/iX3LtVuGp4c

The experiment is known as 2.6g 329m/s (a reference to the .22 bullet), and was actually the invention of an artist, Jalila Essaidi.  She was inspired by a U.S. scientist, Randy Lewis, at the University of Utah.

The spider silk came from Utah, it was combined with skin in a Dutch dermatology lab, and Essaidi paid for the experiment.  The spidey skin has spider silk between the dermis and the epidermis.

Essaidi said her main motivation was simply to see if it could be done.  She also fired a few .22 rounds at the spidey skin.  She doesn’t think the spider silk is harmful because it’s biodegradable, so it would degrade over time.  She also thinks that, unfortunately, that would result in loose skin.