The\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0Army is upping its investment in genetically engineered spider silk for body armor. Last year, the service paid almost $100,000 to Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, which makes spider silk that can be produced at scale \u2014 with silkworms. On Wednesday, the company announced that the Army will move to the second phase of the contract and will look to Kraig to produce a customized strain of the silk for \u201chigh-performance fibers for protective apparel applications.\u201d That is: flexible body armor made from genetically engineered spider silk. The total contract amount would reach $900,000 if parameters are met. Army representatives said that interested in the material purely from a research perspective, for\u00a0now.<\/p>\n Kraig Biocraft injects spider\u00a0DNA<\/span>\u00a0into silkworm eggs, enabling the worms to produce its custom silk. The researchers describe the process in this 2011\u00a0PNAS<\/span>\u00a0paper.<\/a><\/p>\n Spider silk is much tougher than regular worm silk, and about half as tough as Kevlar. But it\u2019s far more flexible, (3 percent elasticity for kevlar versus nearly 40 percent for spider silk.) The Army believes that the energy absorption of the material could be much higher than kevlar (as determined by multiplying the strength of the fiber by the\u00a0elongation.)<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to evaluate, to test, to see if this is a better material to use,\u201d said James Zheng, the chief scientist for the Army\u2019s Soldier Program Executive Office. Among the top potential uses, said the\u00a0representative, \u201cextremity protection\u2026 for the groin area.\u201d Read that to mean soldier\u00a0underwear.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also much more elastic and flexible than kevlar. But getting enough spider silk to clothe an Army is a tall order. The crawly arachnids don\u2019t produce silk in high volume and when you crowd spiders too close together, they eat each other. The quest to produce spider silk in hosts other than spiders has led researchers to use a variety of other methods such as yeast,\u00a0e. coli<\/em>\u00a0bacteria and mammalian\u00a0cells.<\/p>\n But silkworms are the best candidate to produce transgenic spider silk at scale, according to Jon Rice, Kraig Biocraft\u2019s chief operating officer. Unlike those other hosts, silkworms actually produce silk fibers as opposed to what Rice characterized as \u201csilk protein goo.\u201d There are facilities to extract silk all over the world. \u201cWe\u2019ve been using silkworms for over 4,000 years to make fibers. That process is well known.\u201d he\u00a0said.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/admin.govexec.com\/media\/screen_shot_2017-08-01_at_7.30.18_pm.png\")
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