I asked Sarah Hyslop,  the winner of this year’s Genome Alberta Junior Award at the Calgary Youth Science Fair to tell me a little about her experiences and her project. Here is what she told me:

Thanks for the Genome Alberta Award and the $200 prize money. I have attached a copy of my abstract to tell you a bit about my project. My project is about creating an artificial spider silk. I became interested in the topic when I was at the Bug Zoo in Victoria and they were telling me about Spider Goats (goats having the spider gene, resulting in spider silk proteins in their milk). I learnt that the spider gene has also been inserted into bacteria, plants and most recently silk worms. The university of Japan has just created socks make of 10% spider silk in the past few months.

I am 12 years old and homeschooled in grade 7. I love science and this is my 3rd award at the CYSF. Last year I won the Alberta Teachers Association Award for "Can Cats See in Color". Two years ago I won the Alberta Biologists award for "Bats and their Benefits". I also enjoy trampoline, skiing, acting, and scuba diving .

The following is Sarah’s abstract.

I first heard of scientists trying to create an artificial spider silk while at the Bug Zoo in Victoria, B.C. I became interested, researched it and found it would make a great science project. My research question is how and why scientists are trying to create an artificial spider silk. I did a lot of background research and found out that spider silk is 5x stronger than steel, very stretchy, and would have a very long list of applications, such as tougher body armor and tiny, biodegradable sutures. Scientists can’t simply farm spiders and acquire their silk, such as people do silkworms, because spiders are cannibalistic. So scientists must find another way of getting the silk. Their two main challenges are creating the same protein as spiders have in their silk, and linking the proteins together in the same way that spiders do when they spin their silk. There are four ways that scientists have attempted to do this. The first of these ways is inserting the spider silk gene into bacteria such as E.Coli, and having the bacteria create the required protein, which would later be spun into threads. This method did not work very well, as the resulting threads were short and brittle. The second method is inserting spider silk genes into plants, such as potatoes and alfalfa. Plants are easier and cheaper to maintain than bacteria, but the silk protein yield was very low. The third method was a little more successful. A company called Nexia Biotechnologies worked with the U.S. army to insert the silk gene of the orb weaver spider into goats, who would then produce the silk protein in their milk. After extracting the protein from the milk and shaping it into a thread, the scientists got a silk thread that was only 30% as strong as natural spider silk. The latest and most successful method was inserting spider silk genes into silk worms so that they would spin a silk that was consists 10% of spider silk protein. Scientists are attempting to raise that percentage to 50%. Silk worms are easy animals to farm and the method was not too difficult. This was by far the best method found so far. In conclusion, artificial spider silk would be a great discovery with a world of applications. Science has not yet quite caught up with nature, but one day, possibly through the use of “spider silkworms” I am sure we will wear spider silk socks.