Researchers in the US have cracked the secret of the world's most efficient fabric manufacturers - the spider and the silkworm. A team from Tufts University in Boston report in Nature Magazine that it has discovered how the creatures control the structure of the proteins in their silk-spinning glands. Humans have been exploiting the silkworm for more than 2,000 years without understanding how the silk is made. But the silk spun by the spider has been an even bigger puzzle. It could form the basis of a new generation of hospital dressings, and could be woven into lightweight body armour for the military. A strand of spider web is, weight for weight, stronger than steel and more elastic than rubber. David Kaplan of the university's bioengineering centre said: "The finding could lead to the development of processing methods resulting in new high-strength and high-performance materials." A herd of genetically engineered goats in the US is already providing the proteins for spider's silk in their milk. Full article here.