Did the spider goat mutants not work out?
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+3 to projectile defense, with no dexterity penalty?
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Plus style points.
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Coming from China, it’s most probably fiction.
They are not mutants though. They are genetically engineered.
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Sounds like a possible textile fiber that OshKosh B’gosh could make use of these days…
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Very cool
It is much harder to insert genes than knock them out with crispr. Using crispr-cas9 to stop the worms from producing their natural silk isn’t surprising, but inserting spider genes and getting them to be synthesized normally by the caterpillars is very cool and hard to do. I will definitely take some time to go through this paper with my current crispr collaborator to figure out exactly what they did.
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Thank @Brainspore coming to the rescue with a killer caterpillar!
Don’t you guys throw facts into the wheels of my jokes, I dare you! I don’t hesitate to use my tomatoes!
Also, about those spider goats…
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A guy in Massachusetts tried to breed a better silkworm. The experiment failed, but the creatures escaped and now we have gypsy moths eating trees from Maine to Virginia to Wisconsin.
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My bet would be that it’s too expensive to make silk proteins form the milk into fibers.
Along the same lines, scientists have inserted a gene from wheat into the American Chestnut that confers tolerance to chestnut blight. The decision to allow widespread planting is currently under review.
If approved, it will literally save the tree from extinction and restore a critical part of the ecosystem in their native range.
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Also, silkworms make their cocoons out of long threads that can be unwound, while spiders make their webs out of many shorter bits. Regular silk has been used for armor before, but just like this case or Kevlar, you’re talking about many layers of fabric.
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I want to be able to buy mutant spider silk rope and cordage. That stuff will be awesome!
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They’re the huge black and yellow ones with the super long legs, right? They haven’t made it out to my side of the country yet.
These guys?
https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/MISC/SPIDERS/yellow-garden-spider.html
Out my way we call them Writing Spiders and they are loads of fun to watch in the late summer in the garden. It’s like having Wild Kingdom right there! And, they are not invasive (so far as I know, anyway)
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Whatever the hell they want.
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Such an exciting development. Shame it will be a hundred years before we can see anything like the old giants return.
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Ummmm…. Very John Wick?
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