Thaindian News

Washington, Jan 8 (IANS) Hybrid silkworms produced fibres tougher than typical silk and as strong as dragline fibres produced by spiders, which could help make better sutures, artificial limbs and parachutes possible, according to a new study.”It’s something nobody has done before,” says Malcom Fraser, professor of biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame, who led the study.

The project, which used Fraser’s piggyBac vectors to create genetically engineered silkworms with both silkworm and spider silk proteins, was a collaboration of his lab with Donald Jarvis and Randolph Lewis, University of Wyoming.

Jarvis’s lab made the transgene plasmids, while Fraser’s lab made the transgenic silkworms and Lewis’s lab analyzed the fibre from the silkworms.

Commercial production of silk from spiders is impractical because they are too cannibalistic and territorial for farming, according to a Notre Dame statement.

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 fibre 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.