Genetically Modifying Silk Worms For Super Silk

New submitter davidshenba sends this quote from the BBC: "U.S. researchers have created silkworms that are genetically modified to spin much stronger silk (abstract). In weight-for-weight terms, spider silk is stronger than steel. ... Researchers have been trying to reproduce such silk for decades. But it is unfeasible to 'farm' spiders for the commercial production of their silk because the arachnids don't produce enough of it — coupled with their proclivity for eating each other. Silk worms, however, are easy to farm and produce vast amounts of silk — but the material is fragile. Researchers have tried for years to get the best of both worlds — super-strong silk in industrial quantities — by transplanting genes from spiders into worms. But the resulting genetically modified worms have not produced enough spider silk until now. GM worms produced by a team led by Professor Don Jarvis of Wyoming University seem to be producing a composite of worm and spider silk in large amounts — which the researchers say is just as tough as spider silk."

Comments

Re:GM silkworm

[TheRaven64]

It's also interesting for things that are only partly silk. Pashmina wool comes from the underside of the chin of the nepalese goat and is amazingly soft, but very fragile. You can't make things from it if you want to be able to wear them more than once, so you mix in some silk to add strength[1], but the more silk you add the more of the softness and warmth you lose. Stronger silk would mean that you could weave fabrics with a very small amount of silk and a lot of something softer.

[1] It amused me to see street sellers in NYC advertising pashmina shawls as '50% silk!' as if that was a good thing. The high quality ones are at most 20% silk. The silk is a lot cheaper than the wool.

Re:Why is there any concern about GM silk?

[Anonymous Coward]

7 types, sir!

Also, there is much variation between types of spiders with Darwin's Bark spider having the strongest silk of all (drag-line silk from the major ampullate gland)!

And the biggest research that needs to be done is in microfluidics because it's the pH, tension, and hydration status of silk dope that determine the properties of the fibers (those three affect the folding/alignment motifs that make up the super-structure. Spiders regulate this by the speed at which they pull the silk from their spinnarettes. A stupid silk worm will never be able to match this (they naturally make a triangular fiber, whereas a spider's is round). We're trying to put silk worm genes into corn and other crap, but bacterial cell factories produce the proteins efficiently already.