Bombyx mori support or restructure damaged ligaments, tendons, and other tissue. They also created implants made of silk and drug compounds which can be implanted under the skin for steady and gradual time release of medications. Researchers at the MIT Media Lab experimented with silkworms to see what they would weave when left on surfaces with different curvatures. They found that on particularly straight webs of lines, the worms would connect neighboring lines with silk, weaving directly onto the given shape. Using this knowledge they built a silk pavilion with 6,500 silkworms over a number of days. Silkworms have been used in
Flacherie Flacherie Flacherie (literally: "flaccidness") is a disease of silkworms, caused by silkworms eating infected or contaminated mulberry leaves. Flacherie infected silkworms look weak and can die from this disease. Silkworm larvae that are about to die from Flacherie are a dark brown. There are two kinds of flacherie: essentially, infectious (viral) flacherie and noninfectious ("bouffee") flacherie. Both are technically a lethal diarrhea. Bouffée flacherie is caused by heat waves ("bouffée" means "sudden heat spell" in French). Viral flacherie is ultimately caused by infection with "Bombyx mori" infectious flacherie virus (BmIFV, Iflaviridae), "Bombyx mori" densovirus (BmDNV, Parvoviridae) or "Bombyx mori" cypovirus