Soon, spider-silk togs and mussel glue?

They're spun thousands of times a second. They're so sinewy and commonplace, they hardly get noticed. And yet for decades, spider webs have stumped researchers.

No one has been able to create anything nearly as lightweight and flexible (not to mention waterproof) that is also many times as strong as steel. And visions of using spider's silk to make rip-proof clothing, from children's garments to military uniforms, have remained just that: visions.

But researchers are now closing in on understanding how spiders make silk, which may give them the key to creating a synthetic version. Spider's silk is one example of how advances in biotechnology and synthetic chemistry are fueling rapid growth in animal-based products. Nature is teaching scientists how to produce everything from better laundry detergent to rustproof paint.

In time, "biofactories" will create large quantities of cells and tissues to produce useful animal-based ingredients, predicts Murray Moo-Young, a chemical engineer at Canada's University of Waterloo.

Spiders are high on the research agenda because they produce several useful things, including one of the strongest materials in the world.

"If you've ever sort of pushed aside a spider web, you've noted that it pulls before it breaks," says Paula Hammond, a chemical engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Spider silk goes through this sort of stretching before it breaks, and in doing so, it absorbs a lot of energy. This energy-absorbing process is what makes the material so tough."

Spiders spin silk by secreting a fluid, fibrous protein similar to keratin, the same protein found in hair and horns. This protein hardens as it oozes, a process that scientists are only now beginning to understand. So far, they have been unable to produce fibers with the same strength.

But researchers at Tufts University near Boston have discovered how spiders and silkworms produce such strong fibers. Surprisingly, "the entire process is controlled by the amount of water," says David Kaplan, a biomedical engineer at Tufts.

By using the right balance of water, spiders and silkworms control the silkmaking process by preventing proteins from solidifying too quickly. Dr. Kaplan copied the process in the lab, giving scientists a new approach to making artificial silk and spawning hopes of an array of new products from body armor to clothing and superstrong rope.

Scientists are also turning to spiders in the hope of producing an ideal pesticide - one that can target and kill specific crop-destroying insects, while posing no threat to other insects, humans, or animals, says Glenn King, a researcher at the University of Connecticut. About the size of a small crab, Australia's funnel-web spider produces a venom made up of more than 100 compounds. Several of those compounds kill only specific insects, Dr. King says.

"By isolating these compounds from the spider venom and putting them in a common virus that affects only insects, the virus can deliver the toxin to a specific pest," he says. The result could be an environmentally safe pesticide - if scientists can figure out how to make the compounds in a chemical lab.

Another kind of venom - from snakes - may one day help out on laundry day. Chemist Devin Iimoto of California's Whittier College and his students have discovered that an enzyme extracted from the venom of the Florida cottonmouth (water moccasin) removes bloodstains from clothing.

Laundry detergents already incorporate enzymes made by bacteria. But using an enzyme produced by a larger animal is something new. The snake enzyme attacks bloodstains, breaking the attachments between the dried blood and cloth fibers.

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