Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Bangor, ME
Posts: 10173

Using Goats for Silk??!!

for those of you that read /. this isn't new
but those that don't, read this genetic engineering feat...
agree?, disagree?, thoughts for the future of this type of engineering?
or using animals in this way, whether it be for growing ears on the backs of mice or using these goats milk?
please post your thoughts or rants:
http://www.forbes.com/global/2001/0219/061.html

Charlotte's Goat
Christopher Helman, Forbes Global, 02.19.01


In a concrete bunker on a mothballed Air Force base in Plattsburgh, New York, two Nigerian dwarf goats named Mille and Muscade joyfully munch grass and slurp water. Oddly, they are protected from intruders by security guards and razor wire.


Only 20 weeks old, these sister beasts warrant tight security because their milk is highly prized by the U.S. military. Their 70,000-gene chromosomes have been manipulated to include a gene from the orb weaver, a palm-size spider that spins the world's toughest natural material. Researchers are "growing" the spider's silk inside Mille and Muscade's mammary glands.


These strands of silk, just 3 microns thick, are three times as tough as DuPont's bulletproof Kevlar. A woven cable as thick as your thumb can bear the weight of a jumbo jet. Once perfected, the silk will be used for featherweight ballistic vests, medical sutures and artificial ligaments.


The goats represent a promising new avenue in the controversial field of transgenics, the science of splicing one species' genes onto the genome of another. Most efforts, including the recent news of a disease-detecting rhesus monkey (bred with a glowing jellyfish gene), focus on improving the characteristics of existing organisms.


But Jeffrey Turner, the molecular geneticist behind the goat gambit and CEO of the publicly held Nexia Biotechnologies, has more pragmatic goals. He believes that his animals can mass-produce drugs and highly engineered materials more cheaply and efficiently than vats and machines. Rivals include the Pharming Group of the Netherlands, Genzyme Transgenics in Boston, Massachusetts, and PPL Therapeutics of Scotland.


Nexia is tackling a materials-science conundrum that has stumped even DuPont for 20 years: how to synthesize spider silk. Milking the spiders themselves is out of the question—they're cannibals. "Put a bunch of them together and soon you end up with one big, fat, happy spider. It's like trying to farm tigers," says Turner.


By injecting the orb weaver gene into the father of Mille and Muscade, Nexia bred she-goats whose mammary glands are able to produce the complex proteins that make up spider silk. Their milk looks and tastes like the real thing, but once its proteins are filtered and purified into a fine white powder, they can be spun into tough thread.


Turner got the idea while teaching at McGill University in Montreal in 1992, after learning that scientists had isolated three spider genes that code for silk proteins. "It was a purely serendipitous find. The silk gland of spiders and the milk gland of goats are almost identical. Teats equal spinnerets."


In 1993 he founded Nexia with $2 million in venture capital. He started with mouse embryos and graduated to goats, whose large mammary glands make better milk machines. The Nige-rian dwarf goat was the perfect candidate, as it begins breeding and lactating at just 13 weeks. In 1998Nexia flew 130 goats from New Zealand to its facilities on the Plattsburgh base, so that the herd could quickly expand.


Commercial spider silk is two years away, but Nexia's recent public offering raised $27 million, enough to cushion losses that ran $3million last year on $320,000 in revenue. Turner's goats may run dry if the spider silk hits it big. His expansion plan? Spidercows.

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"I prefer to think that God is not dead, just drunk" -- John Huston

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 1827

This is awesome.

Genetics kick ass. Although some tests can be worthless, others are wonderful (the above mentioned).

I'm going to splice my left big toe with a hammer.

Yee-haw!!

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Live In Freedom

"Bitch be gone!"

~what I really should have said to my ex

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Registered: Jul 2000
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Posts: 4501

Ok, this is where I stand:

I wish we could just study genetics for the pure knowledge involved, not to exploit it. I'm tired of life being created, manipulated, and eventually destroyed by these "fabulous" scientific discoveries. Who's died yet, you may ask. I believe that everyone involved in this kind of research is dying, just a little bit. What will we prize if everything is so easy to come by?

Will we value life? Have we ever?

This is the kind of stuff that disgusts me. I hate the whole "playing God" mentality.

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Deny closure. Honor ambiguity.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 15130

I personally like the idea.

Milking the goats for silk to make bulletproof vests and ropes and whatnot. That rocks.

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I could never take any computer seriously that doesnt give me blue screens and illegal ops now and again. --Urbanjunkie
Graphic Cheeseworks.

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Texas
Posts: 2593

I with you, bunkum!




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quote:

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"Em, we'll always have Kosovo...
okay." Bowmore

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Ummmm! Those were the days.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: the heart of an awl
Posts: 3692

My goodness, that's a lovely silk blouse you're wearing. Where did you get it?

I got it from a goat's teat, thanks.

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POW!

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Texas
Posts: 2593

Yeah....boy. A silk bra...new meaning to 'over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder'.


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quote:

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"Em, we'll always have Kosovo...
okay." Bowmore

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Location Location
Posts: 26415

You know, sometimes I wonder why this sort of stuff doesn't bother me. It seems like something that would. But it doesn't. Not in the least.

I equate it with animal testing.

I've tried and I've tried to think of reasonable scenarios as to why genetics and cloning and splicing could be a detriment to our advancement as a species, and I really can't.

I just can't.

We extend our own lives, improve our technology (organic technology for the most part, things like medical technologies, chemicals, bulletproof vests, whatever), better our understanding of how things work (on the most important level IMO, on how nature and life work), and in general move forward.

So, I'm all for it.

Besides, the Sci Fi fantasies are endless.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Shreveport, LA
Posts: 2947

I think people should consider this topic further than silk giving goats. In the future, scientists will undoubtidly be able to create huge vats of culture grown foodstuffs. Could they not as well create huge mammary glands in "barrels" to create tons of this stuff? Part of genetics i think will be benifical, but in it's own way, it's really creepy. I mean, can you imagine a 20 ton titty spitting this shit out?

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"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity." -Robert Heinlein

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Bangor, ME
Posts: 10173

quote:

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Originally posted by Timeenoughforlove:
I think people should consider this topic further than silk giving goats. In the future, scientists will undoubtidly be able to create huge vats of culture grown foodstuffs. Could they not as well create huge mammary glands in "barrels" to create tons of this stuff? Part of genetics i think will be benifical, but in it's own way, it's really creepy. I mean, can you imagine a 20 ton titty spitting this shit out?

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thank you tefl, this is what i was thinkin of
except for the huge...tit....part....yeah.....

images like this:

kinda creep me out, sure its beneficial to the human race but what comes next?
making braindead humans for spare parts?
(heard about a robin cook book something like this called coma from the parents)
if and how will we define these fine lines?


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"I prefer to think that God is not dead, just drunk" -- John Huston

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Registered: Aug 2000
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I don’t think monkeys should play with guns and I don’t think humans should manipulate nature genetically.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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You are all giving very bad reasons as to why genetic engineering is bad.

Because it's creepy?

So is flying through the air at 15000 feet in a gigantic steel bird.

I mean come on, what harm do you see coming from it?

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Registered: Jul 2000
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Posts: 5526

If I think about it too hard, it makes me queasy thinking that I'm drinking lactation fluid drained out of a bovine bred to have an abnormally and unnaturally large and productive udder.

I'm drinking it. In my coffee even.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Cambridge
Posts: 7113

if God didnt want us playing God, he wouldnt have given us the guise kit

yep.

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Will accept plush toys as bribes.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
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I'm personally for genetic engineering.

But since you asked, Paint, here are the three main arguments I can think of right now:

First, it's playing God. Not much more to that argument. Oh well.

Next, it imposes a danger to existing ecosystems by releasing an unnatural organism to the wild (intentionally or accidentally). The consequences of this could cause havok in certain ecosystems, possibly causing the extinction of several natural organisms. An unlikely possibility, but a possibility nonetheless.

Finally, the argument against things such as genetically engineered food is more a question of safety. What are the side effects of the genetic engineering? Might this genetically engineered tomato now be carcinogenic? Things like that.

Again, I'm all for it, but I figured I'd offer you the main arguments against it.

Enjoy ripping them to shreds.

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I could never take any computer seriously that doesnt give me blue screens and illegal ops now and again. --Urbanjunkie
Graphic Cheeseworks.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:

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Originally posted by Roshigoth:

Enjoy ripping them to shreds.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: The Bottom of the Toyem Pole
Posts: 9454

I love this topic. I think there is nothing inherently wrong with genetic modifications. We have been tweaking genomes for thousands of years through selective breeding; now we just have much more powerful tools.

It is important to temper our enthusiasm with caution, precisely as Rosh notes. Just because we can create a strain of corn that needs less fertilizer or pesticide doesn't mean that we didn't make it poisonous at the same time. However, because we may be able to creat plants that reduce the amount of poisons we add to their growing cycle, I think we should explore this.

With regard to plants and farming, we also should not think that genetics is a panacea and all other methods of improving crops and soil conditions no longer need to be considered. Monocropping itself is a horrible farming method for controling pests; one can reduce the amount of pesticides used by simply rotating crops and sowing mixed fields. Allowing a season of fallow maintains healthy soil and reduces erosion risks and fertilizer dependence. These methods should be employed as well to ensure that we can develop a sustainable model of food production.

As for genetics outside the farm, why do people always jump to conclusions of farmed humans whenever the topic turns to genetics and cloning? People feebly wave these inferiority complexes about playing "god" without nothing but emotions to base these decisions on.

I can't think of a good reason why we shouldn't clone people. I think there can be specific reasons to not do it, but as a general principle, why not? Morally and ethically there is nothing wrong with it that I can see. It isn't unnatural; it happens in nature with other species. The biggest problems are not with the cloning, but with the way people would treat a clone.

Again, people seem to think that cloning works like a Star Trek duplicator. No, not at all. The child would look extremely similar to the cloned parent, but due to differences in both the physical and social environment would always be different. Different foods and activities, as well as natural variation, would result in slight differences in physical makeup, not to mention that there is a 20-40 year gap between parent and child. How many peole look the same at age 35 as they did at age 5? 50 and 20? 15 and 45? It wouldn't be all that creepy at all.

Socially the child would develop in an entirely different environment as well. Social customs are different, the parents are different, friends and social issues/ awareness are different. All of this factors would interplay to create a child every bit as 'unique' as a non-cloned child. Remember, a non-cloned child has on average 1/2 of their genes from each parent. A cloned child would have 100% of their genes from one parent. That really isn't that big of a deal I think.

Of course we have to be aware of the potential to fuck stuff up. If you think of computer code as analagous to DNA. If you mess it up, you can render your software and hardware entirely ineffective or create a program that does something you would rather it not do. But the risks of this are outweighed by the potential to creat new programs and modify old programs for the best.

My biggest concern is genetic discrimination. Our government needs to take an immediate stand on this and pass legislation that effectively bars genetic discrimination while creating a system that can identify it when it happens.

yadda, yadda, yadda.

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Boomer Bible: Find it, Read it, Learn it, Live it, Love it. I mean this!

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All hail Eris! All hail Discordia!

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Registered: Oct 2000
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I, myself, was genetically engineered right in the fetus. I have the nose of a cow, the ear of a pig, AND THE COCK OF A HORSE!!! All in all.....NOT TOO BAD, RIGHT?????

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: canadian rockies
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quote:

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Originally posted by Nutrimentia:
I love this topic. I think there is nothing inherently wrong with genetic modifications. We have been tweaking genomes for thousands of years through selective breeding; now we just have much more powerful tools.

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Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:

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Originally posted by bowmore:
Exactly!

That's why Thermonuclear Weapons are cool. We've been killing people for thousands of years. Now we just have much more powerful tools...

Is there any reason for natural order anymore? Are we really this afraid of doing the work?


selah.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: the heart of an awl
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quote:

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Originally posted by Paint CHiPs:
You are all giving very bad reasons as to why genetic engineering is bad.

Because it's creepy?

So is flying through the air at 15000 feet in a gigantic steel bird.

I mean come on, what harm do you see coming from it?

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location:
Posts: 5526

That does it. I'm convinced.
I'm human! I'm taking off all my clothes and I'm gonna walk to the woods so I can live of the land with my bare hands! Yes DAMMIT, I am!

...

I take it back. It's cold out there.

[This message has been edited by missphinx (edited 02-13-2001).]

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Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:

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Originally posted by bowmore:
Exactly!

That's why Thermonuclear Weapons are cool. We've been killing people for thousands of years. Now we just have much more powerful tools...

Is there any reason for natural order anymore? Are we really this afraid of doing the work?

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