sci-fi gene splicing...

[Wlfgng]

reports are on the radio that scientists sucessfully merged DNA from a spider with that from a sheep.  The result is a sheep that produces silk 10 times stronger than steel and can be used to create a flak jacket the weight of a cotton shirt.

what next?

and.. my other thought.. poor friggin sheep !

Imagine if the HTC sheep had that.. lol

[Animal]

links?

[Bluedog]

I cant supply links here either, but I did hear this story about a month ago on TV, except they said it was goats and spiders, and that what happened was that the same protien that spiders use to make silk, was present in quantity in the goat's milk,  and that they could refine the milk somehow and make silk artificially.
They then use the silk to make stuff like bullet resistant vests, high strength rope, and possibly building materials.

Pretty wild stuff really, but allso fairly plausable, and no doubt possible, and to my mind, it is only making use of what knowledge and technology we have, even though it is screwing with nature.
Wonder if the famale Goapider tries to kill the male ones after mating?


Imagine if the HTC sheep had that.. lol

They DO!....ever successfully straffed one?....bulletproof wool.

[Animal]

the way spiders make silk is very different from the way sheep make hair or milk.
i'd have to read a very scientific explanation to believe that this stuff exists and that it can be produced in large enough quantities.

[Wlfgng]

I hear that... seems like a hell of a long way from merely adding a gene from a spider to actually having a 'silk-weaving' sheep or goat.

I did hear it correctly though... but it's damned tough to believe.
no... no links... like I said, just heard it on the radio.

of course you may have to take into account that I live in a ski-resort town that might possibly pull some radio stunt... been know to happen here.

[Tumor]

Originally posted by Wlfgng
reports are on the radio that scientists sucessfully merged DNA from a spider with that from a sheep.  The result is a sheep that produces silk 10 times stronger than steel and can be used to create a flak jacket the weight of a cotton shirt.

what next?

 

Woolly spiders that go MBAAAaaaaaaa in a really high pitched tone.

[deSelys]

Originally posted by Bluedog
I cant supply links here either, but I did hear this story about a month ago on TV, except they said it was goats and spiders, and that what happened was that the same protien that spiders use to make silk, was present in quantity in the goat's milk,  and that they could refine the milk somehow and make silk artificially.
They then use the silk to make stuff like bullet resistant vests, high strength rope, and possibly building materials.

Pretty wild stuff really, but allso fairly plausable, and no doubt possible, and to my mind, it is only making use of what knowledge and technology we have, even though it is screwing with nature.
....

Are you sure this isn't some confused recollection caused by watching the Spiderman movie while being completely drunk?




I'll need some hard proofs from different serious sources before I believe this one. It looks like a urban legend to me, but who knows? Nature can be so weird....

[scspook]

Its true. Have a look here..

http://www.howstuffworks.com/news-item38.htm

[SageFIN]

IIRC the goats do not make silk, they just produce milk with the right proteins in it. The proteins can be extracted from the milk and used to produce artificial silk. I read about this in a Finnish sciene mag.

[deSelys]

Originally posted by scspook
Its true. Have a look here..

http://www.howstuffworks.com/news-item38.htm

I learned long ago that everything you see in the papers, on TV or especially on the web are to be evaluated cautiously. Add this to the fact that 'howstuffworks' doesn't sound particularly 'hardcore science'. The website reminds me 'Science et Vie' (translation: Science and Life), a french publication supposed to make hard science understandable to the masses, but half-full of BS (the rest was commercial ads)...

If I see it on the MIT's website, for instance....I'll believe it.

[straffo]

"La recherche" is better (and understandable mostly ...)

[Nifty]

Feel free to call the prof at Univ. of Wyoming that identified the spider silk proteins.

http://www.uwyo.edu/agadmin/news/spider_silk.html

It ain't MIT, but it still is an educational research department.

[myelo]

Originally posted by deSelys
If I see it on the MIT's website, for instance....I'll believe it.

How about Science journal?

Lazaria AL, et al. Spider Silk Fibers Spun from Soluble Recombinant Silk Produced in Mammalian Cells. Science 2002 January 18; 295: 472-476.

ABSTRACT. Spider silks are protein-based "biopolymer" filaments or threads secreted by specialized epithelial cells as concentrated soluble precursors of highly repetitive primary sequences. Spider dragline silk is a flexible, lightweight fiber of extraordinary strength and toughness comparable to that of synthetic high-performance fibers. We sought to "biomimic" the process of spider silk production by expressing in mammalian cells the dragline silk genes (ADF-3/MaSpII and MaSpI) of two spider species. We produced soluble recombinant (rc)-dragline silk proteins with molecular masses of 60 to 140 kilodaltons. We demonstrated the wet spinning of silk monofilaments spun from a concentrated aqueous solution of soluble rc-spider silk protein (ADF-3; 60 kilodaltons) under modest shear and coagulation conditions. The spun fibers were water insoluble with a fine diameter (10 to 40 micrometers) and exhibited toughness and modulus values comparable to those of native dragline silks but with lower tenacity. Dope solutions with rc-silk protein concentrations >20% and postspinning draw were necessary to achieve improved mechanical properties of the spun fibers. Fiber properties correlated with finer fiber diameter and increased birefringence.

[deSelys]

Ok, ok, you win!

Thanks for the links.