Spider silk is among the strongest and toughest materials in the natural world, stronger than steel yet incredibly lightweight and flexible.

Engineers at Washington University in St. Louis are paving the way for bioengineered spider silk with game-changing applications to include high fashion, medical sutures, transportation safety belts to high performance, blast-proof body armor!

Fuzhong Zhang, a professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering, has made significant breakthroughs engineering synthetic spider silk. Zhang said his team engineered a biosynthetic silk that may be even stronger than the silk spun by spiders.