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
Bombyx mandarina true or mulberry silkmoths. The origin of the domesticated silkmoth is enigmatic. It has been suggested that it is the survivor of an extinct species which diverged from the ancestors of "Bombyx mandarina" millions of years ago. However, this is based on an untenable molecular clock hypothesis that assumes that wild and domestic silkmoths evolved equally fast after their lineages diverged. Rather, the effects of artificial selection have accelerated evolution in the domestic form to a point where it is hard to trace the origin of the numerous breeds of domestic silkworms even with the most modern molecular phylogeny methods.