Complete the following:

Setting:

A well known and sometimes off-beat technology commentator explores new breakthroughs on a popular TV science and tech show.

Story:

  1. Spiders’ silk is incredibly strong, but in short supply (ever tried harvesting silk from a spider?).
  2. So why not take the gene responsible for making spider silk, and splice it into a goat?
  3. The result: goats that produce milk laced with spider silk-protein.
  4. All you have to do then is extract the protein from the milk and spin it into silk and hey presto – a plentiful supply of a super-strong, incredibly versatile, “natural” material.

How should the story end?



There’s a serious point to this question, which I’ll come back to later.  For now though, I’m intrigued as to how people think the story should conclude – remembering this is a TV show for a broad audience.

The spider/goat stuff is real btw – check out this snippet from the US National Science Foundation.

[Update 11/2/10 – the follow-up blog to this piece has just been posted]