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Scientists Genetically Engineer Silkworms to Produce Artificial Spider Silk
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100929142137.htm
ScienceDaily (Sep. 29, 2010) — A research and development effort by
the University of Notre Dame, the University of Wyoming, and Kraig
Biocraft Laboratories, Inc. has succeeded in producing transgenic
silkworms capable of spinning artificial spider silks.
"This research represents a significant breakthrough in the
development of superior silk fibers for both medical and non-medical
applications," said Malcolm J. Fraser Jr., a Notre Dame professor of
biological sciences. "The generation of silk fibers having the
properties of spider silks has been one of the important goals in
materials science."
Natural spider silks have a number of unusual physical properties,
including significantly higher tensile strength and elasticity than
naturally spun silkworm fibers. The artificial spider silks produced
in these transgenic silkworms have similar properties of strength and
flexibility to native spider silk.
Silk fibers have many current and possible future biomedical
applications, such as use as fine suture materials, improved wound
healing bandages, or natural scaffolds for tendon and ligament repair
or replacement. Spider silk-like fibers may also have applications
beyond biomedical uses, such as in bulletproof vests, strong and
lightweight structural fabrics, a new generation athletic clothing and
improved automobile airbags.
Until this breakthrough, only very small quantities of artificial
spider silk had ever been produced in laboratories, but there was no
commercially viable way to produce and spin these artificial silk
proteins. Kraig Biocraft believed these limitations could be overcome
by using recombinant DNA to develop a bio-technological approach for
the production of silk fibers with a much broader range of physical
properties or with pre-determined properties, optimized for specific
biomedical or other applications.
The firm entered into a research agreement with Fraser, who discovered
and patented a powerful and unique genetic engineering tool called
"piggyBac." PiggyBac is a piece of DNA known as a transposon that can
insert itself into the genetic machinery of a cell.
"Several years ago, we discovered that the piggyBac transposon could
be useful for genetic engineering of the silkworm, and the
possibilities for using this commercial protein production platform
began to become apparent."
Fraser, with the assistance of University of Wyoming researcher Randy
Lewis, a biochemist who is one of the world's foremost authorities on
spider silk, and Don Jarvis, a noted molecular geneticist who
specializes in insect protein production, genetically engineered
silkworms in which they incorporated specific DNAs taken from spiders.
When these transgenic silkworms spin their cocoons, the silk produced
is not ordinary silkworm silk, but, rather, a combination of silkworm
silk and spider silk. The genetically engineered silk protein produced
by the transgenic silkworms has markedly improved elasticity and
strength approaching that of native spider silk.
"We've also made strides in improving the process of genetic
engineering of these animals so that the development of additional
transgenics is facilitated," Fraser said. "This will allow us to more
rapidly assess the effectiveness of our gene manipulations in
continued development of specialized silk fibers."
Since silkworms are already a commercially viable silk production
platform, these genetically engineered silkworms effectively solve the
problem of large scale production of engineered protein fibers in an
economically practical way.
"Using this entirely unique approach, we have confirmed that
transgenic silkworms can be a potentially viable commercial platform
for production of genetically engineered silk proteins having
customizable properties of strength and elasticity," Fraser said. "We
may even be able to genetically engineer fibers that exceed the
remarkable properties of native spider silk."
The genetic engineering breakthrough was announced Sept. 29 by Fraser,
Lewis and Kraig Biocraft CEO Kim Thompson at a press conference on the
Notre Dame campus.
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"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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