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Genetically Engineered Silkworms Spin Spider Silk
disco_tracy writes "Silkworms have been modified to produce spider silk, creating a fabric that could be used in everything from bulletproof clothing to artificial tendons." For some reason, this is far less revolting to me than the idea of spider silk being milked out of goats.
Some of the best (sometimes prophetic) fictional quotes ever.
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It's the most cutting edge technology in the world..
For this specific case, I reckon qualifying this as the "best-protection-against-cutting-edges technology" would apply.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
No. That is an incorrect analogy. I did not say I was not interested in GMO, in fact, I explicitly stated that I was interested. What I was responding to was a question of why somebody could be critical of GMO technology. There is a difference between criticism and disinterest.
You also seem to be claiming that I am willing to completely write-off and demonize a technology simply because some people have done a bad thing with it. Not true. Once again, my post was clear about that.
GMO is, to me, a clearly abused technology in the hands of dangerous people with questionable motives.
Spectra cable is right on par strengthwise, but it's a chemical nightmare to make compared to silk. You don't have to truck away thousands of gallons of spent sulfuric acid. Silk isn't rejected by the body. And if it can be made in the right organisms it can be pretty cheap. Goats or plants would make the fiber at a very reasonable price point, silkworms are still orders of magnitude better than spiders. As spiders eat the silk and each other.
So, when silk worms finally do make silk as strong as spiders' silk, then will those silk moths be able to open their own cocoons?
I am tired of the ridiculous "ten times stronger than Kevlar" or "ten times stronger than steel" and such garbage.
For the record: Kevlar is not particularly strong, compared to other high-end materials. What it is though, is ductile - that is, absorbs a nice amount of energy while being plastically deformed. Spider silk does this even better.
Steel can be had in strengths that vary between as low as 200 MPa (bad cast iron) to 3000 MPa (piano wire).
Kevlar is somewhere at 800 MPa or so - stronger than regular construction steel (235-420 MPa) but weaker than hardened sheet steel (900-1300 MPa).
The strongest material you may encounter outside of a laboratory is glass fiber, which can reach strengths of up to 5000 MPa.
Carbon fiber is weaker (~2000 MPa) than glass fiber, but it is more rigid - which is the sought after property most of the time.
Titanium, while having some nice properties, isn't incredibly strong either - around 1000 MPa at best.
Even when considering density, steel usually holds its own quite well - especially when designing things that are supposed to have a certain rigidity, where steel really shines - and while exotic materials may have advantages they are never along the line of "ten times", more like "two times" at best.
I'm a mechanical design engineer and I am really not amused when people show me their titanium golf clubs and claim that it is ten times stronger than steel an cost a hundred times more than gold, or other preposterous claims like that. Titanium is $100/kg, tops.
Studies have also shown a clear correlation between making wild claims and citing sources. The correlation is negative.
So, what makes you think that we aren't (mostly) using monoculture strains now? I don't see this as a compelling argument for that reason - most large agriculture is already monoculture (http://bss.sfsu.edu/fischer/IR%20305/Readings/global.htm). Not that that's a good thing, but it's the way it is because, presumably, it is economically desirable - at least until the next rust fungus or whatever shows up that targets the favored strain(s).
This particular line of thinking is covered very well in the book titled "The Windup Girl", essentially covering mega-corporations producing diseases to kill off their opponents engineered grain, and vice-versa. Very good read indeed.