Thursday, October 14, 2010

Artificial spider silk from trangenic silkworms

Summary- Scientist have found a way to have silkworms spin spider silk. Natural spider silks have a number of unusual physical properties. It has significantly higher tensile strength and elasticity than natural spun silkworm fibers. Scientist want to use the spider silk to replace muscles. They used a unique genetic engeneering tool called "piggyBac". PiggyBac is a piece of DNA known as a transposon that can insert itself into the genetic machinery of a cell.


Opinion- I think it's cool that they have done this. I wonder what the Bulletproof vests will look like. I wonder how long it will take untill they are finally able to make it. I wonder how they will make the bandages. This might turn out to be something useful.
















http://www.macroevolution.net/artificial-spider-silk.html

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