It also led to a long collaboration with Dr. Omenetto, who has developed ways to pattern silk films, making diffraction gratings and other structures. The grating can act as a substrate for other proteins or compounds, raising the possibility that silk films could be used for implantable biosensors or in drug delivery, with the silk dissolving in the body at a controlled rate to release the drug.

One advantage with silk, Dr. Omenetto said, is that the process of making films or other structures is “green”  water-based and at low temperatures. “You can make incredibly sophisticated diffraction gratings out of glass or plastic,” he said. “But those are made at high temperatures or in a very harsh chemical environment,” conditions that would make it difficult to incorporate drugs or other compounds.

Researchers elsewhere have further developed the idea of using silk films for medical applications. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, Eugenia Kharlampieva experimented with depositing silver nanoparticles on films of silk as a way of strengthening them.

“Silk is a wonderful material because it’s biocompatible,” said Dr. Kharlampieva, who is continuing her research at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. “The main drawback is it’s soft. If you want to use it for optical applications, you need to reinforce it.”

The films she uses are extremely thin, and she layers them. “We make this nanocomposite which is flexible, still soft, but mechanically stronger.”

Because the films remain flexible, Dr. Kharlampieva is experimenting with fashioning them into tiny capsules that could contain minute quantities of drugs. Potentially as small as blood cells, they could be used to deliver drugs through the bloodstream.

At Tufts, Dr. Omenetto’s work on patterning silk has led to even more exotic potential applications. Among the latest, developed with colleagues at Boston University, is the idea of using silk as the basis for metamaterials, which can manipulate light or other electromagnetic radiation in ways that nature ordinarily cannot. By producing intricate structures in the films and depositing metal on them, metamaterial antennas may be produced that could be used inside the body as a means of monitoring health  the signal from the antenna changing as conditions inside the body change.

Such applications may be far off, Dr. Omenetto said, but the potential is vast  a fact he realized when he was first asked to poke holes in silk. “It looked like a cool optical material,” he said. “And I haven’t been sleeping that much ever since.”