Move over Nature…the famed strength of a spider’s web silk now has some competition. Bio-mimicry and bio-materials–both emerging new sciences that seek to utilize and/or reproduce or modify natural biological materials and properties for commercial usage–has been seeing an explosion of research and experimentation of late. Recent bio-materials experiments with spider dragline silk (taken from an Araneus spider’s silk glands) have resulted in a bio-mimicked new material that is stronger than its natural version.

To make this new material, the scientists had to “infiltrate” the inner protein structure of the spider’s dragline, silk threads with a metal ion of zinc (Zn 2+). These experiments built on earlier analyses of the mandibles of leaf-cutter ants, locusts, and marine polychaetes (a type of large sea worm) that showed a strong relationship between accumulated Zinc, Aluminum and Titanium levels in these materials and their high tensile and hardness properties.  Previous attempts to incorporate such metals synthetically had proven to be too great a technological challenge.

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Ford Motor Company will be replacing up to 40% of their petroleum-based seat cushions with a new material made from soybean oil. “Soy foam” costs roughly the same to manufacture as traditional petroleum derivatives, but requires less energy to produce and may reduce environmental impacts by 75%.

The new material was developed by Ford’s own researchers, and made its debut in the 2008 Ford Mustang. Soy foam has also already been incorporated into the seat cushions of Ford F-150 pickups, Expeditions, and Lincoln Navigator SUV’s. By the end the year, Ford says it will have 45,500 soy-foam vehicles on the road.

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