Posted on Apr 11, 2016 in Education, Science & Engineering

The blue color evolved independently among tarantulas at least 8 times. iStockphoto

STEM Stories – Blue Tarantulas and Biomimetics [Exclusive Interview]

Lola Gayle, STEAM Register

What do blue tarantulas, biomimetics, STEM education, and crowdfunding all have in common? Quite a lot when you ask Bill Hsiung, a biomimicry fellow in The University of Akron’s Integrated Bioscience Ph.D. program.

I recently got a chance to interview Mr. Hsiung about his work with blue tarantulas, which has entered the next phase of research and is currently using crowdfunding to make it happen.

Biomimetics 101

Biomimetics, also referred to as biomimicry, is an approach used to imitate biological systems seen in nature in an effort to create sustainable solutions to real-world human challenges.

Nature has provided living organisms with the ability to evolve over time in order to adapt to changes. By studying those evolutionary changes, mankind has already used biomimicry to solve several engineering problems like self-healing abilities, environmental exposure tolerance and resistance, hydrophobicity, self-assembly, and harnessing solar energy.

One of the earliest examples of biomimetics was Leonardo da Vinci’s study of birds to enable human flight. Even the Wright Brothers derived inspiration from observations of pigeons in flight.

Another example of biomimetics in action is the invention of Velcro, which was inspired by the tiny hooks found on the surface of burdock burs.

An Introduction to Blue Tarantulas

In December 2015, I reported on Mr. Hsiung’s work involving blue tarantulas. Tarantulas have very poor eyesight and therefore have very little use for such a striking color. And, while we still don’t know the reason behind this quirk of nature, Hsiung and his colleagues now know that the spiders independently evolved the ability to make these blue colors using nanostructures in their exoskeletons.

And here’s where biomimetics comes into play. Even though the researchers may still be in the dark about the benefits tarantulas receive from being blue, the science behind it may lead to new ways to improve computer or TV screens — and even textiles — using biomimicry.

The researchers have already found that the tarantula’s blue color is not iridescent. Therefore they believe the same process can be applied to make pigment replacements that never fade and help reduce glare on wide-angle viewing systems in phones, televisions, and other devices.

“They could be used as pigment replacements in materials such as plastics, metal, textiles and paper, and for producing color for wide-angle viewing systems in phones, televisions and other optical devices,” Hsiung said in December.

A Chance Meeting

Cut to April 2016 and a happenstance meeting between myself and Mr. Hsiung via my personal blog where I spoke briefly about my original article here on STEAM Register. He pointed me to Experiment.com where he and his colleagues are currently running a crowdfunding project to further their research on blue tarantulas and how to make our world more colorful.

Being such a staunch advocate of STEM and STEAM, my first thoughts went immediately to the education side of things. And, when I asked him about it, Mr. Hsiung proved himself to be equally as avid.

“As a Biomimicry Fellow at The University of Akron, we are familiar with the STEAM concept. One of the co-PI for our Biomimicry Center is a painter,” he said. “And we just finished our first TEDx Salon event last night,” he told me on Monday.

His colleague Derek Miller (a Biomimicry Fellow with two bachelor degrees in Biology & Graphic Design) was also on hand for the recent TEDx talk. During that session, Derek represented a “designer’s” point of view, while Hsiung represented the “scientist’s” point of view for biomimicry.

When I asked Mr. Hsiung what advice he had for students still unsure if they should pursue STEM and STEAM fields, he quoted Miller as saying, “If you’re struggling or debating whether to choose STEM or Art/Design, don’t. Just do biomimicry. It’s the best of both worlds.”

And if that’s not enough to make you want to jump into a STEM career, when I asked Mr. Hsiung about his “a-ha” moment involving blue tarantulas, he had this to say, “I didn’t even know they existed before I started my research on them!”

This kind of thing happens quite often in science, so I think the take-away is that you never know what will interest you until you really take a closer look and dive in with both feet.

When Science Inspires More Science

Mr. Hsiung is relatively new to the field of biomimetics. He actually got his start in biology and biomedical sciences. When asked what inspired him to go into the field, Mr. Hsiung replied, “When I was pursuing my PhD in biomedical sciences, I had to take a break because of a personal health issue. And it is literally this TEDTalk that inspired me during my medical leave, and had me start pursuing biomimicry research.”

Part of his new passion for biomimicry is fueled by what he describes on his faculty page as “fundamental gaps between biological research ends and the application ends in the real world.”

I asked Mr. Hsiung to expand on what those gaps might be and how he aims to bridge them for real-world applications.

“Currently, a lot of scientific biomimetic research is done by physicists, material scientists, and/or engineers separately.” On rare occasions, however, “the research is conducted in an interdisciplinary setting, with members from different fields including a biologist,” he said.

“This caused some problems when translating the research to a real world application, because the non-biologist scientists have no one to put them in check when their understanding/assumption of a biological principle is not correct while they’re doing translational research for applications,” he added. “The Biomimicry Fellows at The University of Akron are trained to work in this research without boundary settings, we have deep understanding about the biology and biomimicry process, and we also know how to translate those into a language that can be understood by people from different fields.”

Basically what he’s saying here is that when you have a lot of cooks in the kitchen — and each cook has their own specialty — they must work together to find ways to bring each ingredient and each recipe together in order to come up with one fabulous end product.

“Tarantula Blue”

Will we ever see devices or textiles sporting a vibrant “Tarantula Blue” label? I sure hope so! But in the meantime, much more work needs to be done. When I asked Mr. Hsiung what his ultimate goals were for this research, he had this to say, “The ultimate goal will be to completely replace toxic synthetic pigments and dyes (even the food dyes). Therefore, anywhere that we need colorants will benefit from this research.”

As an example of this, he pointed me to a 2014 Gizmodo article about chocolate etched with rainbow holograms using no additives whatsoever. Instead, the technique involves carving specific microstructures into the chocolate’s surface that defract light — much the same way that the security holograms on credit cards work.

In the early stages of his work, Mr. Hsiung discovered that there are several species of blue tarantula. But when he dug deeper, he found that blue is actually quite prevalent in tarantulas. “What surprised us the most is that, when we performed a phylogenetic analysis, we figured: those blue tarantulas don’t share a common ancestor,” he said. “Instead the blue color evolved independently among those blue tarantulas at least 8 times. Actually, green is the least common color in tarantulas, which totally goes against my intuition.”

Now, the researchers have designed five models that vary in complexity, incorporating successively more details of real tarantula hairs. Their goal is to fabricate those five designs using 3D nano-printing technology so that they can test their hypothesis experimentally and determine which features produce blue and which remove iridescence.

But before they can do this, they need to meet their funding goal of $6,000. Once the designs are made, the researchers will then be able to compare the angle-dependency of the colors produced by each design through angle-resolved reflectance spectrometry. They will also compare them visually through photography by taking series of shots from different angles. Through those steps, the researchers say on Experiment.com, they will be able to move into the next phase and identify how each feature of the complex nanostructure contributes to color.

In Your Hands

So why should this matter to you?

When I asked Mr. Hsiung what timeframe he expects to see end results and if there will be patents and new technologies involved, he really surprised me.

“There will definitely be new technologies coming from this research if the experiments support our hypothesis,” he said. “There might be patents down the road, but that requires more work and is not within the immediate scope of our proposed research here.”

And here’s where it gets REALLY interesting.

“Since this project will be partially backed by the general public, if successful, there will be no patents involved to the immediate discoveries/principles addressed in this project.” he said. “So that everyone can take and build on our results (and we believe this would be a big one)!”

“In other words,” he said, “everyone can take our results and apply for patents, if they have ideas about how to make new products/technologies out of our research.”

And, should you choose to invest $5 or $5000, “backers will have a team of scientists at their disposal to answer any related scientific questions,” he concluded.

See Also: STEM Stories – Meet Dinosaur George

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Biology • Biomimetics • Biomimicry • Biotechnology • Citizen Science • Crowdfunding • Entomology • Evolution • Nanotechnology • STEAM Fields • STEM Fields