[h=1]Good news for Karachians: Dutch artist creates bulletproof skin[/h]By jazbablog - Sat Aug 20, 11:47 am
KARACHI: A small sample of human skin has been bio-engineered to include spiders silk between its layers. The Netherlands Forensics Institute has test-fired low-speed rifle bullets at it, and shown that it halts them.
The project, which is appropriately named 2.6g 329m/s, is the creation of Dutch artist Jalila Essaidi. She says she was inspired by Randy Lewis, an American professor of molecular biology at the University of Wyoming, who in 2010, managed to genetically engineer goats whose milk contains the proteins that create spider silk. Essaidi contacted Lewis, and added other partners in the Netherlands to create a special type of human skin that can resist relatively slow-moving bullets. Her piece is part of the Designers & Artists 4 Genomics exhibition currently on display at the Naturalis Museum in Leiden, and will be there until January 2012.
She said that they all worked together. Randy sent the silk, Dermatology made the skin with the spider silk in between the dermis and the epidermis and at the Netherlands Forensics Institute we shot it and made some high-speed photographs of the impact of the bullets said Essaidi.
She said that the big idea is to show that it works, that its not only a crazy idea, but to show that if you mix human skin cells with spider cells, it might actually work and it did work with slow bullets.
KARACHI: A small sample of human skin has been bio-engineered to include spiders silk between its layers. The Netherlands Forensics Institute has test-fired low-speed rifle bullets at it, and shown that it halts them.
The project, which is appropriately named 2.6g 329m/s, is the creation of Dutch artist Jalila Essaidi. She says she was inspired by Randy Lewis, an American professor of molecular biology at the University of Wyoming, who in 2010, managed to genetically engineer goats whose milk contains the proteins that create spider silk. Essaidi contacted Lewis, and added other partners in the Netherlands to create a special type of human skin that can resist relatively slow-moving bullets. Her piece is part of the Designers & Artists 4 Genomics exhibition currently on display at the Naturalis Museum in Leiden, and will be there until January 2012.
She said that they all worked together. Randy sent the silk, Dermatology made the skin with the spider silk in between the dermis and the epidermis and at the Netherlands Forensics Institute we shot it and made some high-speed photographs of the impact of the bullets said Essaidi.
She said that the big idea is to show that it works, that its not only a crazy idea, but to show that if you mix human skin cells with spider cells, it might actually work and it did work with slow bullets.
