though just a fraction of the size of a human hair, is stronger than steel and more powerful than tevlaru have called spider silk the ancient biomaterial for the future. what do you mean by that? >> spiders have been around for roughly 600 billion years. it has properties that no manmade properties have. >> what can you use it for? >> medical products, car tyres, bike tyres - looking at it for air bags. >> how do you get from a single strand of spider silk to a group. a good place to start at at the spider lab at the university of california in cheryl hayashi's lab. >> we are historians of the spider geno. we are trying to figure out the blueprints for making the silk. you have a transformation from liquid inside the spider's body and outside it's significantly a solid fibre. >> we'll set up a manual silking of the spider. widow. >> first, we stun the spider with carbon dioxide and tape her down ghently. >> this goes across. >> the top of the hour glass. now we are ready for silking. >> this is the set up to get the silk out. >> yes. it's simple. >> the black widow produces several diffe