Thought Science and @Josh_Melnick might find this interesting.
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I have a bunch of old PCBs and gold legged chips that this may be helpful with. 
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Speaking of…have you seen the bugs that are given precious materials for their chrysalis? Gorgeous stuff.
I wonder if we could make silk
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If we want to culture silkworms, I can probably provide all the mulberry leaves they can eat. They grow like weeds in my back yard.
I hear we have an active fiber group for the spinning part…
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As a child, I brought two silkworms home from my preschool at the Fort Worth Museum of Science & History. My mom has been into spinning and weaving for as long as I can remember, so she was really excited about them.
A few years later we had an estimated 5,000 silkworms in boxes all over our house. We had two mulberry trees in our front yard, and it was a whole family effort to keep them fed. You could actually hear them chomping on the leaves, there were so many of them.
My brother and I ended up in National Geographic’s World magazine because of them.
My mom wove a map of the Silk Road of China using silk that we harvested from the cocoons, and that she spun and dyed. I had a really neat early childhood.
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I love this story - post a picture of the article!!!
I’ll have to find it. This was published in something like 1980.
Thiobacillus ferrooxidans
available from ATCC:
(amaerican type culture collection, repository of microbial strains):
https://www.atcc.org/products/all/23270.aspx
also have instructions on care and feeding.