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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.
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...
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.