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What do you get if you cross a goat with a spider?

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  • 19-01-2002 10:42am
    #1
    Hobbes
    Registered Users Posts: 21,264 ✭✭✭✭


    This

    Hope I don't see a goat in my bath anytime soon.


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    #2
    MiCr0
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 6,265 CMod ✭✭✭✭MiCr0


    i was talking to some genetic students over the weekend, and they all agreed with out a doubt.........
    worst combination ever!
    seriously, if you want to overcome people's fear of cloning and genetically modifide stuff -> don't do something crazy like this.
    once people get an artists versions of a spidergoats (tm pending) all hell will break loose.

    MiCr0

    ps spiderbaby any one?


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    #3
    GoneShootin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,478 ✭✭✭GoneShootin


    spidergoats ROFL

    Spidermans new sidekick. Eats his way thru anyting, and produces body armour on the side.

    horsephone


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    #4
    Bob the Unlucky Octopus
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,136 ✭✭✭Bob the Unlucky Octopus


    This may seem extremely amusing, but we could be seeing the beginning here of bio-materials engineering. Conceptually speaking, it's not at all far-fetched, certainly a lot less cavalier than so-called 'designer-baby eugenics' that the press seem to gorge their readers with almost daily. While that is extremely unlikely both scientifically and in the present political climate, materials engineering using cellular pathways is hardly something new. After all, we already produce human insulin with cloned porcine pancreatic cells (man + pig), growth hormone with a bovine thymus (man + cow), and HRT estrogen (woman + dog). So is the idea of using a goat's lactaction cells to create a molecular construct of keratinized spider silk so far-fetched?

    Our best weight-impact ratio substances such as kevlar are extremely expensive to make, difficult to transport and unreliable at best at many of the things they do. The fact that a spider-web can stop a bee flying at 30mph, would be the impact-to-mass ratio equivalent to that of a cotton night-shirt stopping a .44 caliber pistol round from nearly point-blank range. Not to mention the hardness that can be obtained when simply layering collagen fibers over one another- bulls' horns are after all, simply highly specialized nail structures. Materials engineering (and superhero comics if Gone Shooting has his way) will never be the same again...

    Occy


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