We see absolutely nothing wrong with the idea of creating bulletproof skin, aside from the fact that it involves using spider silk and is incredibly creepy. Oh, also the fact that it has to be grafted onto your skin.
But this is science! We don’t do things just because we can! We do them to justify grant money, and make extremely cool slow motion videos!
Under the jump is a proof of concept for bulletproof skin. Goats were engineered by Utah State University to create usable spider silk, and then Abdoelwaheb El Ghalbzouri of Leiden University in the Netherlands layered in and bioengineered human skin cells.
The result? Skin that can resist bullets when fired at half speed. At full speed, they’ll still penetrate, but with, obviously, a lot less force. So, basically, all those horror movies about messing in God’s domain are about to happen at once. Video of the skin our future bioengineered overlords will wear under the jump!
https://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1
image via Shutterstock