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 34 100 goats & spiders DHJanzen100044.jpg high resolution
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| When it comes to biodiversity prospecting, the sky is the limit for imagination. One recent case of biodiversity development is represented by this herd of goats (actually, just outside of Nairobi). When you go in for your triple bypass, the sutures that they sew you up with will be biodegradable. That means that they are made of spider silk, and there is a small cottage industry somewhere in the tropics of collecting spider silk that is then processed into these natural silk sutures. Well, the gene jockies in some Texas company have now taken the silk synthesis genes out of a spider and moved them into (genetically modified, then) goats. The goat then makes spider silk into its udder along with the milk. This is then milked, the silk separated out, and spun into biodegradable sutures. 100 goats in Texas are now making enough spider silk to provide all the biodegradable sutures needed by the medical community. This is real biodiversity prospecting. When there are 235,000 species of things making gawd knows how many different chemicals in the ACG, the possibilities are stagering - but just like coffee, the question is how to set it up so that the income flows back to the source as much as into the pockets of humanity. | ||
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