Utah Researcher Randy Lewis Helps Dutch Artist Jalila Essaidi Make Bulletproof Skin. A bio-art project to create bulletproof skin has given a Utah State researcher even more hope his genetically engineered spider silk can be used to help surgeons heal large wounds and create artificial tendons and ligaments.
With Lewis’ help, Dutch artist Jalila Essaidi conducted an experiment weaving a lattice of human skin cells and silk that was capable of stopping bullets fired at reduced speeds as part of her project 2.6g 329m/s.
“Randy and I were moved by the same drive I think, curiosity about the outcome of the project,” Essaidi said in an email interview. “Both the artist and scientist are inherently curious beings.”
Essaidi, who used a European genetics-in-art grant to fund her project at the Designers & Artists 4 Genomics Awards. Essaidi initially intended to fire .22 caliber bullets at the “skin” stretched in a frame. But she decided to place the “skin” on a special gelatin block used at the Netherlands Forensic Institute.
Using a high-speed camera, she showed a bullet fired at a reduced speed piercing the skin woven with an ordinary worm’s silk But when tested with Lewis’ genetically engineered worm’s silk grafted between the epidermis and dermis, the skin didn’t break. Neither was able to repel a bullet fired at normal speed from a .22 caliber rifle.
Essaidi was intrigued by the concept of spider silk as armor, and wanted to show that safety in its broadest sense is a relative concept, hence bulletproof.
Essaidi, said she has plenty of wild ideas but wants to transplant the bulletproof skin. She said Geert Verbeke, director of Verbeke Foundation in Belgium, the biggest Eco/BioArt museum, wants to wear the skin “as an ode to BioArt.”
