BioSteel

BioSteel is a trademark name for a high-strength polyamide fiber material made of spider silk-like protein extracted from milk of transgenic goats, made by Nexia Biotechnologies. While the attempt to put spider genes into goats and extract the protein from the milk succeeded, the project so far failed to spin it into the fiber. This and other biopolymers are being researched to provide lightweight, strong, and versatile materials

Additional recommended knowledge

How to quickly check pipettes?

What is the Correct Way to Check Repeatability in Balances?

Essential Laboratory Skills Guide

BioSteel construction

In order to construct BioSteel, Nexia claims that they take a spiders dragline gene and genetically alter it and inject it into a goat embryo. From there, Nexia allows the goat to be born and fully develop. Next comes the milking process, since the dragline protein can only be found in Goat milk they can only extract the dragline gene from female goats. Nexia takes the goat milk and separates the milk from the silk concentrate.

Currently Nexia claims that they still have no idea how to convert the silk concentrate into actual silk, let alone a cloth-like material. (Possibly outdated now, see this reference from the Nexia website:)

Spinning of BioSteel® proteins into nanometer diameter fibres has been achieved and Nexia is now determining the product specifications for medical and micro-electronic applications.