- LONDON - As comic book hero
Spider-Man fills cinemas with his webby adventures, prepare to meet an
equally astonishing creation - Spidergoat.
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- Scientists have combined the DNA from a goat and spider
to create an animal which produces silk that is five times stronger than
steel. The fibre, derived from the goats' milk, harnesses the huge strength
of silk spun by spiders.
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- The breakthrough could be worth millions because the
silkmilk fibre can be used to make body armour which is far tougher than
normal bullet-proof vests - while weighing little more than a cotton shirt.
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- The hybrid goats were created by the insertion of a single
gene from an orb-weaving spider into a fertilised goat egg.
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- The amazing genetically-engineered goats are outwardly
normal, but carry the gene responsible for production of a spider silk
protein. Each goat is only 1/70,000th spider, but when fully grown the
females produce a milk which can be treated to produce a fibre with spider-silk
strength.
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- The animals are believed to be the first commercially-viable
creatures made from the DNA of two species.
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- Nexia, the Canadian biotech company which produced the
goats, hopes the fibre - dubbed Biosteel - could take a large chunk of
the billion-dollar market in industrial fibres.
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- http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,4562471%255E13762,00.html
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