-Caveat Lector- >From Forbes, 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. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
