Spidergoats and the quest for bullet proof clothes

I have known about these won­ders for years, but then I surf on the ITA ver­sion of the web.  Now they are main­stream, here are the Spidergoats:

A goat that pro­duces spider’s web pro­tein is about to revolu­tion­ise the mater­i­als industry.  Stronger and more flex­ible than steel, spider silk offers a light­weight altern­at­ive to car­bon fibre.  Up to now it has been impossible to pro­duce “spider fibre” on a com­mer­cial scale. Unlike silk worms, spiders are too anti-social to farm suc­cess­fully.  Now a Cana­dian com­pany claims to be on the verge of pro­du­cing unlim­ited quant­it­ies of spider silk — in goat’s milk.    BBC science

“Spider­goat, Spider­goat, does whatever a Spider­goat does.  Can he spin a spider web?  Yes, he can, because he’s a Spider­goat.  Lookout, here comes the Spidergoat!”

From Nexia’s website:

BioS­teel^®

BioS­teel^® is Nexia’s recom­bin­ant dragline spider silk pro­gram and is based on using Nexia’s trans­genic goat tech­no­logy. Spider silk has long been admired by mater­ial sci­ent­ists for its unique com­bin­a­tion of high-performance prop­er­ties includ­ing tough­ness, strength, light­ness and flex­ib­il­ity. Nexia has exclus­ive world­wide rights to broad pat­ents cov­er­ing spider silk genes and pro­teins and is in the pro­cess of devel­op­ing a com­mer­cial spin­ning pro­cess for BioS­teel^®.

Stranger than fic­tion is fact.

Basho

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