D: all of the above
The ‘day 2’ picture doesn’t look better than traditional methods. It appears to be infected, too.
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That is so unfair! The spiders are very professional about having the frikken lasers attached to their heads.
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Certain silk proteins have been produced in g.m. yeast, e. coli, tobacco plants, etc. Fibroin might be rather more difficult to create that way, though. And then, yeah, there’s the gold nanorods, though I’m not sure how much they actually use, or whether some other material could work the same way.
Laser-welded, laser-wielding, near enough.
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…Anytime
Recommended at the price
Insatiable an appetite
Wanna try?
(Sorry - that line always triggers that song in my head, but the next four lines seem apposite here, too. And I’ll be humming it all day long now.)
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So welding, then.
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SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!!! The governing AI seems unhappy with that reply. Perhaps this will molify?
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You can get “waste silk” cheaply. The fibers are too short, too skinny or otherwise unsuitable for spinning and weaving.
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If human wounds and incisions heal from the bottom up and you seal the top with a laser, does the chance of suppuration and infection increase?
I looked at those pictures and was thinking along the same lines you mention, and I think I would still opt for the “old” closure practices. Closing a wound is an art. I have a trail of empty boxes of wound closure strips (aka Steri-Strips) to prove it.
Good luck you early adopters you. Please let us know how you fare.
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This sounds like a more complicated way to glue wounds together. We use DermaBond all the time now, and for superficial lacerations (skin only) it is pretty damn smooth. I would be interested in hearing how this is an improvement over superglue, which does have some limitations, especially in situations where the is tension on the wound. I have to think the equipment to make this work would be pricy.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the end goal is internal use.
Cyanoacrylates react fairly enthusiastically with moisture; which is going to make your life a lot harder when trying to close things that are surrounded by fluids or mo1st tissue, rather than dry skin surface; probably harder still when you are forced to rely on your little laparoscopic manipulators to get a nice application of the rapidly polymerizing glue.
A photosensitive adhesive, by contrast, can be selectively activated where you want it so long as your apparatus includes an optical fiber carrying your laser beam that you can move around as needed. Those are hardly bargain items; but are already available(at power levels ranging from illumination to cutting and cauterization); and would tend to be used in cases that already require specialized equipment. That would be my guess.
(Edit: in thinking about it, that is likely why they went with the exotic experimental protein-based formulation rather than one of the various photoset adhesives and resins that team chemistry offers in industrial quantities: for surface level bonding it’s enough to be nontoxic; but for something that is going to end up inside the body you really want at least biocompatibility, ideally ready absorption of excess and replacement of glue bond by healing tissue if the glue ends up between the wound edges being bonded rather than just on top and holding them together.
Cyanoacrylates, and probably most of the photoset options in common use, would fail that criterion; while the protein formulation has better odds.)
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An application I had not thought about. Of course I only work with the outside of bodies. I find it requires more ego than I have to think that cutting into people will make them better! 
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My suspicion is that this would use the waste (short fibers less suited to weaving) from the process of unwinding cocoons. I’m not sure how much of that there is, or how a new market for it would affect the supply.
edited to add: I see Tsu Dho Nimh beat me to it.
Inverse of the green thumb. Everything it touches withers and dies.
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