Nexia is tackling a materials-science conundrum that has stumped even DuPont for 20 years:how to synthesize spider silk.

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Turner's goats may run dry if the spider silk hits it big.

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Nexia became known as the spider-silk company, after it created transgenic goats capable of producing spider silk (which is, in fact, a form of protein) in their milk.

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By injecting the orb weaver gene into the father of Mille and Muscade, Nexia bred she-goats with mammary glands able to produce the complex proteins that make up spider silk.

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Hagfish slime has many similar qualities to spider silk, but has one big advantage, says Fudge - the proteins that make it up are far smaller, and so easier - in theory - to replicate.

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It's a model that scientists have tried with spider silk before, but because the proteins in spider silk are so large, it takes some pretty wacky-sounding techniques to replicate them (like getting it from the milk of transgenic goats).

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Spider-silk saw notes warble through, sounding more familiar than their eerie call probably should and framing a gentle counterpoint from viola and cello.

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Researchers are "growing" the spider's silk inside Mille and Muscade's mammary glands.

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Turner got the idea while teaching at McGill University in Montreal in 1992, after learning that scientists had isolated three spider genes that code for silk proteins.

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