JDL | LtCmdr Reiber & Lt Jexen | "Old Dogs can Still Learn New Tricks"

Posted on Sun Mar 1st, 2015 @ 6:55am by Lieutenant Commander & Lieutenant JG Teá Black

1,736 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: A Spot To Kill
Location: Science Labs

= V =

Lieutenant Izin Jexen was a intelligence officer attached to the Vindicator his reporting office was that of department of science and technology for Starfleet Intelligence. Every once and awhile ships would get officers like him to help cultivate new technology or at least see what science is working on starships of the fleet. Walking into the science labs the male Trill looked around, "I'm looking for a lieutenant commander Ethan Reiber." He said always enjoying walking into the science labs.

Ethan looked up from a large clear aluminum tank that seemed to be swarming with some sort of activity in it. Seeing the other officer, he gave a nod. "That would be me. Can I help you, Lieutenant?" He asked, coming to his full height and giving his attention to the other man.

"I'm lieutenant Izin Jexen an officer from the department of science and technology in Starfleet Intelligence." He said walking over to the commander, "I've been assigned to the Vindicator to see what your department has been working on. Our department likes to keep an eye on advancements in the sciences."

Ethan smiled. "I hope you're not arachnophobic," he said, indicating the tank. Reaching to a panel, he activated a viewscreen that showed hundreds of spiders swarming around the interior of the tank making webs of every description.

"Not in the latest before I joined the intelligence I was apart of Fleet Science. So what's the project?" Izin asked pushing his face closer to the tank to look more closely at the designs of the webs that the spiders were spinning.

"I found a very interesting twenty-first century bit of work on sequencing spider silk proteins to make a form of body armor," Ethan said. "It was reported to be ten times more resistant to impact than a material they called Kevlar. Combining that with graphene tubes should make a impact resistant, energy resistant form of armor that would be perfect for duty uniforms."

"Very very impressive," the Trill said stepping back, "have you been able to do any tests yet or are you still growing the spider silk proteins?"

"I've conducted a few tests with them, but the main issue is getting an amount of silk that can actually be applied to the production of materials. It would take roughly a million Darwin Bark Spiders to produce enough material to make one suit, and they're highly territorial," Ethan told him. "I'm combining the best of the Darwin Bark Spiders with silk worms, but the result isn't as durable, even if the production increases."

"Have you thought of cross-breeding the Darwin Bark spider with another breed of spiders that have a higher silk production allowing you to not need as many?" Izin suggested glad to be back in the labs instead of reading reports.

"The problem once again is the durability of the silk," Ethan explained. "I've managed to breed the aggressive tendencies out of the Darwin Bark spider so they won't kill each other in close proximity, as this shows, but the problem still lies in production. Thus far, only silk worms seem capable of increasing the production. I may have to bond the graphene to the Darwin Bark spider silk, but it would decrease in flexibility that's needed for a comfortable fit."

"Hmmm.......well one of my old hosts was a botanist mainly working with marine algae especially seaweed." Izin said walking over to a console and pulling up some of her papers, "she was working on binding seaweed with proteins to help make clothing last longer her papers might help you with the durability."

"That's an interesting idea," Ethan admitted as he looked over the officer's shoulder at the screen. "Will it lessen the impact resistance or conflict with the proteins of the spider silk, though?"

"If I remember correctly in theory it shouldn't but her time with us was unfortunately cut short." Izin said bowing his head slightly, "it shouldn't impact the resistance as her study was making them last longer but my guess would be the main issue would be the bonding of the two different proteins."

"That is the key problem," Ethan said, looking at the Intel officer. "Given the fact that your former host was working on it, do you not retain the memories of it?" He asked, his memories of Trill hosts and symbiotes calling up that fact.

Chuckling, "I do but that host was about 50 years ago. So there's been a host in between her and me." Izin said with a small smile, "I can go through her papers and if you don't mind the help I can provide some insights from her work?"

"Any help would be appreciated," Ethan said as he studied the work of his former host. "This is interesting." He pointed out a sequence of bonding proteins on the screen. "Could that be modified for the proteins in Darwin Bark spider silk?" Going to another terminal, he pulled up his work and transferred it to the terminal the Intel officer was. "If we do a merger of the two and run it through a genetic sequencer, perhaps we might get effective results with a little modification."

"I don't think why it couldn't." Izin said with a grin taking a closer look at the sequence's.

"If we can isolate the Aciniform silk from the rest of it and bond with the the research that your former host started," Ethan mused as he looked over the proteins. "Combine that with the graphene concept...it would create a virtually impenetrable suit of clothing that could stand virtually any form of assault."

"Yes but that's a big if." Izin said tapping again zooming in more, "look at how the Aciniform silk cell walls are and now the Darwin Bark spider silk. We need something that can bridge them like a common plasma that they both share."

"The Aciniform silk is used to wrap up prey and as a protective outer coating for egg cases of the Darwin Bark spider. The cylindrical glands, which only female spiders have, produce a fluffy inner layer for the egg case," Ethan pointed out. "That's what makes it so strong, yet flexible enough to be comfortable. In the case of bonding, it isn't necessary. Only a way to increase the production and the binding. The molecular structure of unspun silk is both complex and extremely long. Though this endows the silk fibers with their desirable properties, it also makes replication of the fiber somewhat of a challenge. Various organisms have been used as a basis for attempts to replicate some components or all of some or all of the proteins involved. These proteins must then be extracted, purified and then spun before their properties can be tested."

Izin nodded looking over the data, "if you don't mind may I stay down here to going through my old host's papers?" Izin said feeling the exhilaration when a project starts to take shape.

"Not at all," Ethan said amicably as he began to study the research of the Lieutenant's former host as well. "The method for spinning the silk is going to be the tricky part. There were only two twenty-first century methods for doing that according to the research that I found. Those are electrospinning and wet-spinning. The electrospinning method has been shown to create nano-scale fibers from both silk dissected from organisms and regenerated silk fibroin, but the wet-spinning method produced silk fibers of diameters ranging from ten to six micrometers, compared to diameters of two point five to four micrometers for natural spider silk."

Finding a open desk he took a seat and started pulling up Nadzia's work, "So in this paper she talks about how strong marine algae is for filtration. It doesn't exactly apply but it does give some good ways of using to filtrate certain particles from getting to the skin."

"That won't be a problem when the graphene is bonded to the silks," Ethan said. "We can even put the resulting fibers in common materials to disguise it and use it as a further layer of insulation."

Izin nodded still pouring through her work realizing that most of it was to help with creating plants that could produce food, fast, efficiently and survive most weather and geographical locations for when terraforming happened.

"If we combined Spidroin silk with the Aciniform silk...." Ethan's mind wandered for a moment. "The Spidroin silk is as thick and resistant as one of steel but is more flexible. It can be stretched to approximately one hundred and thirty-five percent of its original length without breaking. We'd need to find an alternate to the graphene if we did that, though. What research on the bonding did your former host have on increasing durability in vegetation that could be applied?"

"Looks like she hybridized different algae species to create one that the holdfast; a specialized basal structure providing attachment to a surface, often a rock or another alga, allowing for the to be longer haptera; a finger-like extension of the holdfast anchoring to a benthic substrate, and than and utilized for food. But the haptera was given almost a suction cup to allow for a more stronger grip."

Ethan shook his head. "Dragline silk from both Caerostris webs and forcibly pulled silk, exhibits an extraordinary combination of high tensile strength and elasticity previously unknown for spider silk. The toughness of forcibly silked fibers averages 350 MJ/m3, with some samples reaching 520 MJ/m3. Thus, C. darwini silk is more than twice as tough. It seems we're working in totally opposite fields."

Chuckling again, "My apologies I feel like Nadzia would be more of a help." Izin said, "Nadzia was one of my former hosts. And the one that did all of those papers."

"No apologies needed, Lieutenant," Ethan said. "We just need to find a way to make it work with my research. Any help at all is appreciated as long as it can produce feasible results."

Izin stood closing out the console, "Well let me doing some reading there's couple of other papers I want to take a look at that might prove useful." He added, "it was a pleasure meeting commander I'll give you call when I find something.

"Very well, Lieutenant," Ethan said. "Thank you for the offer and I'll be here."

Lieutenant Izin Jexen
Intelligence Officer (NPC by Aza)
USS Vindicator

Lieutenant Commander Ethan Reiber
Biologist
USS Vindicator

 

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