From The Daily What: Geek:
Spider-Goats of the Day: Dutch scientist Jalila Essaïdi wants to make human skin as strong as a bulletproof vest, and her method involves placing a spider-silk matrix between two layers of tissue.
Unfortunately — or fortunately, if you’re arachnophobic — spiders don’t make enough silk fast enough for the project to succeed. So Essaidi is bypassing spiders altogether and using genetically-modified goats instead.
The “spider goats” produce a silk protein that comes out in their milk, allowing scientists to harvest enough to test the bulletproof skin theory. The project looks promising, although it doesn’t yet stop bullets 100% of the time.
Essaïdi’s next goal is to replace keratin in the human body with spider silk, making our entire bodies bulletproof. Why didn’t Peter Parker think of that?
