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Researchers insert a spider web gene into the silkworm

Spider silk is a bit of a dream material, stronger than steel by some measures yet incredibly light and flexible. Obtaining spider silk, however, is a bit of a nightmare, as most spider species are both extremely territorial and prone to cannibalism. While we have managed to identify the genes that are needed to produce silk, inserting those into other species hasn't worked out especially well, since silk formation depends on fairly precise mixtures of several proteins, as well as how the spider extrudes the fiber.

A Chinese group is now reporting some progress in overcoming at least some of these challenges. Their trick was to insert the genes into a domesticated species that already makes something like spider silk—specifically, the species that gave us the term silk. The new bit of genetic engineering has resulted in a silkworm that produces a hybrid silkworm/spider material that's not as tough but is a bit stretchier than native spider silk.

[...] They designed proteins that would cut the silkworm's chromosomes on either side of a gene that encodes a major silk protein. RNA encoding those proteins was injected into silkworm eggs, along with a DNA template that would allow the egg to repair the chromosome by inserting a spider silk gene instead. This put the spider gene under the control of the factors the silkworm normally uses to create silk proteins, which worked much better, as about 35 percent of the resulting silk was composed of the spider protein.

[...] The silk itself was also slightly different, shrinking in diameter by about 16 percent. Its ability to withstand stress without breaking was down by a similar percentage. But there were some good features; the spider-silkworm hybrid silk could be stretched to about 1.5 times the length that normal silk could without breaking.

Mass spider silk production through targeted gene replacement in Bombyx mori (open, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1806805115) (DX)

Original Submission

1. "takyon" - https://soylentnews.org/~takyon/
2. "Researchers insert a spider web gene into the silkworm" - https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/08/researchers-insert-a-spider-web-gene-into-the-silkworm/
3. "Mass spider silk production through targeted gene replacement in Bombyx mori" - http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/07/31/1806805115
4. "DX" - https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1806805115
5. "Original Submission" - https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=28329

printed from SoylentNews, Spider Web Gene Inserted Into Silkworms on 2024-04-16 18:27:49