Three

Will       Ben         Jose       Alvin

Refined Spidersilk SynthesisNew 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

• 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/PMC1885213/

• http://www.springerlink.com/content/n23g1p106512k447/

• http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/01/0117_020117TVspidermammals.html

• http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/295/5554/472?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

• Safety 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: nearfree

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