Stronger than kevlar

golok

golok

Joined
Oct 20, 2000
Messages
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I just read a report which says that scientists have successfully come up with a DNA concoction that involves spider and goat.

According to the report, a silk that been produced from the two genetic mix that is four times stronger than kevlar and weighs less than a cotton shirt.

The new fibre breakthrough will see the creation of a bullet proof vest for US soldiers. A Canadian company is responsible for the breakthrough.

Considering the possibilities on this matter, soldiers and police officers will be "bullet-proof" for a while before a more powerful bullet is invented.

Heck, I want a silk shirt like that!
 
I was under the impression that the strength and weight of the material was not due to any genetic muddling, but that it was just normal spider silk, which is already immensely strong by weight.

The gene splicing comes in, I believe, in making the goat produce the silk in it's mammaries, enabling you to "milk" it out, to get a quantity more significant that we have been able to in the past.

Fascinating, and frightening.

Joe S.
 
On a similar note, I saw a news story on Fox about a new "cut proof"
material. Very flexible and thin, yet supposed to work extremely well. Developed for fish cleaning gloves I think.
 
To quote South Park's Chef, "Everyone knows that elephant and pig DNA don't match!"

That's one brave little spider...
 
yeah the spider silk is just regular spider silk(strongest forms of kevlar come from it). the problem is that spider do not produce nearly enough silk to create as many vests as needed(spider farms don't work, spiders eat each other), so they spliced the genes into goats. the goats are milked, and they put the milk through some sort of process which allows them to reclaim the silk from the milk.
 
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