Spiders may be some people's worst nightmares, but their silk has shown great potential for producing bandages, textiles and a wealth of nanomedical technologies. The silk is extraordinarily light and has high tensile strength; the silk of a newly discovered Madagascar spider is 10 times stronger than Kevlar. As a result, scientists and biologists are hoping to genetically engineer a variety of organisms that can produce the material.
But the silk has proven difficult to produce in appreciable quantities. Spiders are often cannibalistic and do not thrive when crowded in domestic settings, whereas silk worms have been cultivated for thousands of years and can produce cocoons that contain as much as a half-mile of thread. To overcome this obstacle, researchers Malcolm Fraser of the University of Notre Dame and Randy Lewis of the University of Wyoming have transferred the gene for spider silk production to silk worms, thus combining the superior strength of spider silk with the production volume of silk worms. Lewis also has genetically engineered the gene for silk protein production into goats. The silk is produced in the goats' milk and strained out for further processing. The engineers of these silk production methods predict that it will replace many petroleum-based synthetic fibers, which require the manipulation of hazardous chemicals for production. The silk is projected to be market-ready in just a few years and may soon find its way into parachutes, surgical sutures, bulletproof vests and everyday clothing.
-compiled by Joshua McNamara
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