Guest guest Posted March 3, 2003 Report Share Posted March 3, 2003 Goats to Produce Spider Silk Using gene splicing, genetic engineering firm reproduces nature's toughest fiber.What do you get when you cross a goat with a spider? A Canadian biotech firm has used gene splicing to find out. The result, says Quebec-based Nexia Biotechnologies, is a synthetic version of spider silk that's biodegradable but also strong enough to stop bullets. Spider silk has long been admired for its amazing strength. The toughest kind is called dragline silk: It forms the framework of the spider web, and it's also what the spider spins when it jumps. "Dragline silk is known as having greater tensile strength than steel, which is incredibly strong, given the diameter of the actual thread," said Rosemary Gillespie, a spider expert with the University of California at Berkeley. To create a synthetic version of nature's wonder fiber, the Nexia scientists took the silk genes from a spider and spliced them together with cells taken from cows and hamsters. The result was a thick fluid of proteins that, when exposed to air, self-assemble to form filaments just like natural spider silk does. http://www.techtv.com/news/scitech/story/0,24195,3369222,00.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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