Glow-in-the-dark silk is the least of the possibilities Yoshikazu Tsuno / AFP / Getty
Silkworms have had their genetic code hacked, allowing them to create a new kind of silk not found in nature. The hacking goes beyond the usual forms of genetic modification, by fundamentally altering the nature of the silk protein the animal makes. And unlike previous attempts at this, it will work on an industrial scale.
βThe silkworm is the first ever industrially useful animal engineered to incorporate synthetic amino acids,β says Hidetoshi Teramoto of the in Japan, whose team…
