I Love My Time or Another Time of Yours

Part 36 Article: Biotechnology My Blog Title: The world, from the past to the present, retold from the timelines. Click on PDF to download from Part 3 2023: Researchers reported a production method for spider silk fibers from gene-edited transgenic silkworms for a sustainable alternative material six times stronger than Kevlar. This type of fiber could be utilized as surgical sutures, addressing a global demand exceeding 300 million procedures annually. The spider silk fibers could also be used to create more comfortable garments and innovative types of bulletproof vests, said Mi, and they may have applications in smart materials, the military, aerospace technology, and biomedical engineering. To spin spider silk from silkworms, Mi and his team introduced spider silk protein genes into the DNA of silkworms so that it would be expressed in their glands using a combination of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology and hundreds of thousands of microinjections into fertilized silkworm eggs. T...

Part 35 Article: Biotechnology My Blog Title: The world, from the past to the present, retold from the timelines. Click on PDF to download from Part 3 2023: Researchers reported a production method for spider silk fibers from gene-edited transgenic silkworms for a sustainable alternative material six times stronger than Kevlar. These repetitive sequences in silk fibers, whether derived from silkworms or spiders, played a crucial role in determining their strength and toughness by facilitating the formation of Beta sheets crystalline regions. Researchers recently described their process and findings in the journal Matter. Silkworms had long been cultivated for their silk, but the fibers they naturally produce break easily. Scientists got around this by taking steps that included using the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 to insert spider silk protein genes into silkworms. They also made localized changes to the inserted genes to ensure they cooperated with the worms’ existing silk-producin...