- The centuries-old silk industry faces a revolution after
Chinese genetic engineers said yesterday that they had successfully implanted
spider genes into silkworms.
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- Mass-produced spider-strength silk could be used in bullet-proof
jackets and parachutes as well as for ordinary clothes, scientists in Shanghai
said. Dr Lu Changde, of the Chinese Academy of Science's Shanghai Institute
for Biochemistry, said his team had succeeded in producing silk containing
spider genes after four years' work, though the resulting silk still required
fine tuning.
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- He said: "We have successfully implanted the gene
that makes spider silk viscous into the fertilised eggs of silkworms. There
are still many difficulties to overcome, but we have solved the most difficult
problem." The scientists still have to prevent the silk from turning
yellow and to make it strong yet soft enough to wear.
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- Teams elsewhere in China - which has embraced genetic
engineering with enthusiasm and few restrictions - last year boasted that
they had placed rabbit genes in cotton plants, producing cotton fibres
"as soft as rabbit hair".
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