Spider silk produced by cow cells

Spider silk, the material used by spiders to build their sticky, entangling webs, is legendary for its amazing strength and durability. Scientists have long hoped to be able to produce spider silk, since it is thought that perhaps it could be strong enough to stop bullets if present in large enough quantities. However, attempts at spider farming have failed because spiders are highly territorial and cannibalistic.

Scientists at Nexia Biotechnologies, located in Quebec, Canada, recently announced that they have succeeded in producing the worlds first artificial spider silk. The scientists used gene splicing to implant the silk protein genes in the cells of cow glands. Spider silk is a material science wonder a self-assembling, biodegradable, high-performance, nanofiber structure one-tenth the width of a human hair that can stop a bee traveling at 20 miles per hour without breaking, said Jeffrey Turner, president and CEO of Nexia, in a press release. Dragline silk, the radial spokes of a spider web, is the strongest type of silk. It is five times tougher than steel by weight and is stronger than nylon and Kevlar. In addition, spider silk is biodegradable and the production process devised by Nexia is not harmful to the environment as is the production of steel and other materials.

Nexia calls the new spider silk product BioSteel and is planning to develop it for commercial applications such as medical sutures, biodegradable fishing lines, and soft body armor. The silk strands produced are not yet perfect they stretch too much and can not be produced in large quantities using this process.

However, Nexia plans to mass produce the spider silk by using a herd of goats to produce the silk proteins. The goats, located near Quebec, Canada, have been genetically modified to contain the spider protein genes. The goats then produce milk that contains spider silk proteins in it.