Genetically modified Silkworms create silk as strong as spiders

[Jaketh]

BBC Article

US researchers have created silkworms that are genetically modified to spin much stronger silk.

Does this mean ill have a weblauncher attacked to my wrist so i can swing between skyscrapers?

But seriously according to the article it has many industrial and medical uses such as

The main applications could be in the the medical sector creating stronger sutures, implants and ligaments. But the GM spider silk could also be used as a greener substitute for toughened plastics, which require a lot of energy to produce.

[hellheaven1987]

Biotechnology is the future of humanity; soon we would have Space Marines to conquer the galaxy.

[Logios]

Interesting article, not that seriously written though. I could not find the articles this was based on, but maybe I did not dig deep enough. This seem pretty plausible though. The price will however never be near the price range of ordinary silk since:
* Patents allow the company in question to earn back what it has invested in research and development of the recombinant product and workhorse and all the failed projects related to this - and then some. Investors in the patent holding company will demand a return on their investment.
* Since the spider silk consists of exoprotein compounds ("foreign" to the silkworm) the production of this is not likely to be as high as the silk production in wildtype silkworms - thus more worms are needed to produce the same amount.
* A higher eukaryot recombinant organism is likely to be less healthy than its wildtype counterpart and more likely to die prematurely (before producing the cocoon), again - more worms needed.
* Both recombinant products in general and compounds used as pharmaceutical ingredients or medical devices in particular are highly regulated by the health authorities, so much more quality control will be needed compared to production of garment-grade silk.
Silkworms are actually used as expression organisms for several biotech products, but mostly of the high-value type biopharmaceuticals (protein-based medicines) since the quality of the product is high when produced in organisms evolutionarily close to the organism the product is intended for (silkworms and humans are pretty close - relative to say bacteria and even yeasts), but the productivity in silkworms is rather low on the large scale since all operations in the production must be performed manually by skilled personnel. It is much more used to have the silkworm express the desired product in the haemolymph of the silkworm ("blood" of insects) rather than in the silk since this can be harvested earlier than at the cocoon stage.
I read this article about silkworms as an expression platform for human growth hormone, but even this relatively expensive product is today produced in e.Coli bacteria and subsequently purified and modified through a number of production steps - still cheaper than the manual labor heavy silkworm expression system:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...06291X85721444
It requires an access through a university library or similar, otherwise you can only get the abstract.
An open-source review on this subject (that even qoutes the previous article) exists however, and if you don't mind reading a lot of heavy biotech "stuff" it is actually quite interesting:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/9v0707446275lj05/

[Jaketh]

Biotechnology is the future of humanity; soon we would have Space Marines to conquer the galaxy.

A shame both of us will be too old for the selection process as we would not be able to survive the transplants

[Arbitrary Crusader]

Silky Wormy barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic silkworm. Silky Wormy will be that Worm. Better than he was before. Better...stronger...faster...Silkyer.

He is the Six million dollars Silkworm!