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Three
Will
Ben
Jose
Alvin
Refined Spidersilk Synthesis
New high tensile material
enabling novel structures and invention
Significance and Uses
• The suggested form was dragline silk
• 5 times stronger than steel by weight
• Uses would include cables, sutures, ligament
replacements, bulletproof vests,
Competitors
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Recombinant silkworms (2)
BioSteel (recombinant goats) (1)
Recombinant salmonella
Kelvar
Normal Steel
Forcible and Natural Silk harvesting
Knowns
• Comprised of 2 proteins, coded for by genes
MaSdI and MaSdII or ADF-3 and ADF-4 (1)
• Difficulties in cloning entire genes because of
large repeating sequences, so recombinant
are usually shortened versions (3)
• Also, really large proteins (200-350 kD), which
make secretion difficult (1)
• There is a process for wet-spinning the
recombinant silk (4)
• Biological Structure of a spider's spinneret (1)
Unknowns
• How to deal successfully with and isolate the
entirety of ADF-3, even with large repeating
sequences
• How to get a cell to secrete a protein that is
200+ kD
• Easy purification of silk proteins
• Finer spinning process
Sources
• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC188
5213/
• http://www.springerlink.com/content/n23g1p1065
12k447/
• http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/0
1/0117_020117TVspidermammals.html
• http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/295/55
54/472?
ijkey=hq9P3a.MOxB5w&keytype=ref&siteid=sci
Idea: Biotic Antibiotics
• Current antibiotics very broad-spectrum
• Increasing occurrence of antibiotic resistance
• Supply of medication to third world
• Inability of immune system to evolve rapidly
Idea: Biotic Antibiotics
• Biological solution to biological problem
• Potential for great specificity
• Not susceptible to resistant strains
• Marginal cost zero
• Augmentation to human immune system
Idea: Biotic Antibiotics
Competition:
• Existing medical treatments (antibiotics)
• Social resistance
• Human Immune System
• Evolution
Idea: Biotic Antibiotics
Known
• Humans symbiotic
• Pre-existing 'probiotics'
• Bacteria compete to
extinction
• Engineered
kill-switches exist
Unknown
• S
afety considerations
• Attack methods other
than competition
• Rate dynamics
• Targeting and
encapsulation
Idea: Tunicate-based lithium
refinement
• Half the world's accessible lithium in Bolivia:
5.4M tons
• Modern batteries entirely lithium-based
• Energy crunch
• Global warming
Idea: Tunicate-based lithium
refinement
• Seawater: 230 billion tons of lithium
• Tunicates concentrate Li and V up to 1M x
• Biological power
generation
• Metal refining: near
free
Idea: Tunicate-based lithium
refinement
Competition:
• Current lithium refinement methods
• Coal, oil power
• Solar, wind power; biodiesel
• Evolution
Idea: Tunicate-based lithium
refinement
Known
• Tunicates can do it
• How to knock out a
gene
• How material
purification works
Unknown
• Best implementation of
gene
• Specific pathway
tunicates use
• Controls for and
constraints on system