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Companies Genetically Engineer Spider Silk
gthuang88 writes: Spider silk is touted for its strength and potential to be used in body armor, sports gear, and even artificial tendons and implants. Now several companies including EntoGenetics, Kraig Labs, and Araknitek have developed genetic approaches to producing commercial quantities of the stuff. One method is to implant spider genes into silkworms, which then act as spider-silk factories. Another is to place the gene that encodes spider web production into the DNA of goats; these "spidergoats" then produce milk containing spider-silk proteins that can be extracted. There's still a long way to go, however, and big companies like DuPont and BASF have tried and failed to commercialize similar materials.
What could possibly go wrong. Better hope they don't mutate or start biting people.
Then wait until the boys hit puberty.
Of course it would lose all value due to the overabundance so the investment will never pay off.
Homer Simpson thought was a pig see "Spider Pig" episode of The Simpsons.
It seams to be a long shot to take a Goat and it's milk as a route to silk. Why not amp up the silk moths or will the quantity of these proteins per gallon of milk out produce the silk per cocoon?
Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig, Does whatever a Spider-Pig does. Can he swing from a web? No, he can't, he's a pig, Look out, he is a Spider-Pig!
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
Great! Please make pantihose, tights, stockings, holdups, ....!
I wish to offer my services to our new spidergoat overlords.
Suspend spider silk from a satellite.
Employ an army of spiders to ferry micro-cargo from earth to space.
As a species, we've advanced pretty well and can use technology to reproduce all kinds of natural processes. It's easy to be lulled into thinking we can do just about anything. So it's kind of nice to see we still have some tricks to learn. I mean, no one is surprised we can't yet dial-in desired genetic traits a la Gattaca, but engineering spider silk seems fairly simple by comparison. I suppose once we have total control over the individual placement of atoms, at scale, anything really will be possible.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
There are people out there, who are sincerely concerned about whether vitamin-C they are offered was "genetically modified"... How are you going to sell such GMO silk to them?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I thought the magic in spider silk was 2-part.
First, is the molecule-- but the second is how it gets "zipped" into a silk filament by the spider's spinnarets.
http://www.nature.com/nature/j...
Just putting the genes into a silkworm WILL NOT PRODUCE SILK LIKE A SPIDERS!
Producing the proteins in goats wont fix the mechanical processing that spiders do.
This is why these things keeps failing. The protein is only part of the package. They need nano-structure spinnaret simulants to spin the solution with as well.
Spider-Silk garments - how tacky!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Spidergoats?
Damn, I can think of one Homer J. Simpson that's jealous as hell.
All he has is a lame spiderpig. That's soooo 2007.
Not only do people produce large quantities of spider silk in, amongst other methods, goat milk. They also work on using this silk to essentially make bullet-proof skin. Currently what they do is put a mesh of spider silk in a petri dish and then let skin cells grow over this mesh. The result is patches of skin strong enough to withstand slow-moving bullets (e.g. pistol bullets). http://www.frankensteinmd.com/...
Until quite recently, spider silk had the highest tensile strength of any substance known to man, and the name silksteel pays homage to the arachnid for good reason.
-- Comissioner Pravin Lal ,"U.N. Scientific Survey"
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
I remember this being done years ago with the goats. Have the patents expired and now anyone can take it up without paying?
Stopping a bullet with your skin is nice, but the shock wave is still going to do a lot of damage. A bullet to the skull will produce a hail of bone fragments.
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Is it just me or does it look like this article was written in 2006, and just happens to have a 2014 datestamp? I'm pretty sure I've read most of this information years ago.
Spider goats In their natural habitat http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/ob/goats_tall.jpg
Spider man spider man radioactive spider man!!!!!!
So, it's now scientifically directly false to claim that all observable biological features can be explained without reference to design.
Looking for a proposed date at which we know design did not happen before then, to be able to make a -qualified- statement of explanation via evolutionary processes, that is, knowing the mainstream causal factors given, e.g. in classrooms, is simply, provably, scientifically false.
What date do you like, before which we have evidence to assert biological design did not happen?
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Spider goat! Spider goat! Does whatever a spider goat does!
This sig intentionally left blank.
http://www.forbes.com/global/2001/0219/061.html
Search for the spider goats in Google News. Last I saw they could extract the silk proteins from the milk but weren't able to combine them, they ended up with a big pile of the proteins and no way to weave them into silk. Though I believe they're still working on it there isn't high hope they will succeed. That's why they've begun talking about using silk worms, they are easy to setup (it's been done for centuries) and harvest silk and have they already have the necesary biological systems necessary to spin the proteins into silk fibers.
from TFA:
When it was cooking in the microwave, it made a vegetal aroma that all the kids complained about,” he says. “I always told them it was the smell of money.
. . . welcome our new Arachno-capric overlords!
I thought we had game changing technology called the 3D printer? Can't we just 3D engineer any material we want now?
I was told the game had changed, was I lied to?
Indeed, I came here to say much the same - the magic of spider silk is at least as much in the "spinning" as in the protein. Silkworms will presumably make far purer silk-proteins that goats, and might (or might not) possibly even produce a slightly-stronger-than-normal silk themselves, but it won't be anywhere near the same league as true spider silk. I rather doubt micropipets could do the job either - I've gotten the impression that the spinnerets are an extremely sophisticated protein-manipulation organ, I would be very impressed if "shoving it down a stationary tube" could be made to have the same effect. Even if we're only trying to make one kind of silk instead of the half-dozen or so kinds the typical spider produces.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
This GMO stuff just keeps getting more creepy, freaky and frankensteinish. We need to ban this stuff before it causes a global ecological disaster and wrecks the planets environment or turns the place into a monstrous wasteland of deformed beasts and poisonous, cancer causing food. The dangers of GMOs have been well documented by others, including the cancer causing potential, such as in Jeff Smith's book.
I remember the spider silk goats from years ago. The last I heard was they had a small breakthrough in the spindle (underwater), yet hadn't yet scaled it up much. They said they where working with the FDA for muscle ligament replacements and such. I'm still waiting for my spider silk goat grappling rope.
yeah, people who only know bullet damage from TV can't comprehend the impact trauma to the underlying muscles. Even with a "bullet proof vest" without the impact plate your looking at a horrid bruise, big enough caliber might still kill you. Even with the plate it can still bruise to the point of making movement quite painful and unsteady. Oh, and it takes at least a few weeks to recover back to 100% even without actual penetration.
Taylor Hebert is going to go out of business (warning: almost two million words of free awesome ahead).
Unless your skin, muscle, and bone were all reinforced with different version of fibrion (spider silk) molecules
Really. I don't.
of course, yes. I'd assume, though, that such an impact trauma probably is better than a freely bleeding hole in your body? Not quite sure Internal bleeding is no joke either. You could probably reinforce in similar ways muscle tissue and perhaps bones too. (On the show they also mentioned super strong bone replacement, however, that'd not be living, i.e. it wouldn't produce blood plate as our bones do.)