(Press-News.org) This week, research was published showing that silk produced by transgenically-engineered silkworms in the laboratory of Malcolm Fraser, Jr., professor of biological sciences at University of Notre Dame, exhibits the highly sought-after strength and elasticity of spider silk. This stronger silk could possibly be used to make sutures, artificial limbs and parachutes.
The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and highlighted for their breakthrough in the long search for silk with such mechanical properties. The manuscript was published after an in-depth peer review process, and was deemed by the publishers as a newsworthy article of the issue in which appears, further indicating its relative importance to science and technology.
"It's something nobody has done before," Fraser says. The project, which used Fraser's piggyBac vectors to create transgenic silkworms with both silkworm and spider silk proteins, was a collaboration of his laboratory with Donald Jarvis and Randolph Lewis at the University of Wyoming. Jarvis's lab made the transgene plasmids, while Fraser's lab made the transgenic silkworms and Lewis's lab analyzed the fiber from the silkworms. Results showed that the fibers were tougher than typical silkworm silk and as tough as dragline silk fibers produced by spiders, demonstrating that silkworms can be engineered to produce such improved fibers.
Commercial production of spider silk from spiders is impractical because spiders are too cannibalistic and territorial for farming. Researchers have experimented with producing the stronger material in other organisms, including bacteria, insects, mammals and plants, but those proteins require mechanical spinning – a task the silkworms perform naturally. The stronger fiber could find application in sutures, where some natural silkworm silk is used, as well as wound dressings, artificial ligaments, tendons, tissue scaffolds, microcapsules, cosmetics and textiles.
This work is the culmination of a research effort begun more than 10 years ago with an internal award from the University of Notre Dame to Fraser to develop silkworm transgenics capabilities, a two year NIH R21 grant awarded to Jarvis, Lewis, and Fraser, and several years of supplemental funding from Kraig BioCraft Laboratories. The success of this research would have been impossible without the ability to carry out silkworm transgenesis, mastered by Bong-hee Sohn and Young-soo Kim in the Fraser lab at the University of Notre Dame.
Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc., with Fraser, Lewis and Jarvis on its scientific board, is currently evaluating several business opportunities for this first generation fiber for both textile and non-textile use. The researchers ultimately expect to improve on the first-generation product to make even stronger fibers.
###Fraser is the Rev. Julius A. Nieuwland, CSC, Professor of Biological Sciences at University of Notre Dame and is a member of the Eck Institute for Global Health. Fraser holds seven patents and is widely known for his work in molecular virology and transgenic engineering.
Hybrid silkworms spin stronger spider silk
2012-01-09
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Mars rover to spend winter at 'Greeley Haven,' named for late ASU geologist Ronald Greeley
2012-01-09
TEMPE, Ariz. - NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity will spend the next few months during the coldest part of Martian winter at Greeley Haven, an outcrop of rock on Mars recently named informally to honor Ronald Greeley, Arizona State University Regents' professor of planetary geology, who died October 27, 2011.
Long passionate about exploring the solar system and Mars in particular, Greeley was involved with many missions to the Red Planet, including Mariners 6, 7, and 9, Viking, Mars Pathfinder, Mars Global Surveyor, and the two Mars Exploration Rovers. He was ...
Experts offer pointers for optimizing radiation dose in pediatric CT
2012-01-09
An article in the January issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology summarizes methods for radiation dose optimization in pediatric computed tomography (CT) scans. Approximately seven to eight million CT examinations are performed for various pediatric clinical indications per year in the United States.
Justification of clinical indication is the most important aspect of reducing radiation dose with CT scanning. A substantial number of pediatric CT scans lack appropriate justification or can be replaced with other imaging modalities with lower or no ionizing ...
The nuclear, biological and climate threat - 2011 reviewed
2012-01-09
In this special issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published by SAGE, experts reflect on 2011 and highlight what to look out for in 2012 in the areas of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, biosecurity, and climate change. Topics that have made the headlines during the previous 12 months, including the increased tension surrounding Iran's nuclear programme, the aftermath of the Fukushima incident, and the state of US policy on climate change, are analyzed in detail in this special issue.
At the Doomsday Clock Symposium on January 9-10 in Washington, DC, the Bulletin's ...
Salk scientists map the frontiers of vision
2012-01-09
There's a 3-D world in our brains. It's a landscape that mimics the outside world, where the objects we see exist as collections of neural circuits and electrical impulses.
Now, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies are using new tools they developed to chart that world, a key step in revolutionizing research into the neurological basis of vision.
For the first time, the scientists have produced neuron-by-neuron maps of the regions of the mouse brain that process different kinds of visual information, laying the groundwork for decoding the circuitry ...
Tiny worm points to big promise
2012-01-09
Two related studies from Northwestern University offer new strategies for tackling the challenges of preventing and treating diseases of protein folding, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), cancer, cystic fibrosis and type 2 diabetes.
To do its job properly within the cell, a protein first must fold itself into the proper shape. If it doesn't, trouble can result. More than 300 diseases have at their root proteins that misfold, aggregate and eventually cause cellular dysfunction and death.
The new Northwestern ...
Tobacco company misrepresented danger from cigarettes
2012-01-09
A new UCSF analysis of tobacco industry documents shows that Philip Morris USA manipulated data on the effects of additives in cigarettes, including menthol, obscuring actual toxicity levels and increasing the risk of heart, cancer and other diseases for smokers.
Tobacco industry information can't be taken at face value, the researchers conclude. They say their work provides evidence that hundreds of additives, including menthol, should be eliminated from cigarettes on public health grounds.
The article is published in PLoS Medicine http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001145
In ...
Majority groups support assimilation -- except when they're not majorities
2012-01-09
We generally think that views about how to integrate a diverse society depend on people's positions in that society—that is, whether they're in the racial, religious, or cultural majority or a member of a minority. In the U.S., "people tend to believe that blacks prefer pluralism and whites prefer assimilation," says University of Delaware psychologist Eric Hehman. Assimilation asks minorities—whether newly arrived or historically rooted—to drop their cultural identities and adopt the ways of the majority. Pluralism recognizes and even celebrates minority cultures, which ...
Better research is needed to understand why elders are happier
2012-01-09
Older people tend to be happier. But why? Some psychologists believe that cognitive processes are responsible—in particular, focusing on and remembering positive events and leaving behind negative ones; those processes, they think, help older people regulate their emotions, letting them view life in a sunnier light. "There is a lot of good theory about this age difference in happiness," says psychologist Derek M. Isaacowitz of Northeastern University, "but much of the research does not provide direct evidence" of the links between such phenomena and actual happiness. In ...
UF research on newly formed plants could lead to improved crop fertility
2012-01-09
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new University of Florida study shows genomes of a recently formed plant species to be highly unstable, a phenomenon that may have far-reaching evolutionary consequences.
Published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study is the first to document chromosomal variation in natural populations of a recently formed plant species following whole genome doubling, or polyploidy. Because many agricultural crops are young polyploids, the data may be used to develop plants with higher fertility and yields. Polyploid ...
A decade of research proves PET effectively detects dementia
2012-01-09
Reston, Va. (December 28, 2011) – In a new review of imaging studies spanning more than ten years, scientists find that a method of positron emission tomography (PET) safely and accurately detects dementia, including the most common and devastating form among the elderly, Alzheimer's disease. This research is featured in the January issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.
Researchers reviewed numerous PET studies to evaluate a molecular imaging technique that combines PET, which provides functional images of biological processes, with an injected biomarker called 18F-FDG ...