'Spider-goats' start work on wonder web
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 18/01/2002)

A HERD of goats containing spider genes is about to be milked for the ingredients of spider silk to mass-produce one of nature's most sought-after materials.

Scientists have for the first time spun synthetic spider silk fibres with properties approaching the real thing, paving the way for their use in artificial tendons, medical sutures, biodegradable fishing lines, soft body armour and a host of other applications.

Webster and Peter, genetically altered goats unveiled today by the Canadian company Nexia, are the founders of a GM herd whose offspring will produce spider silk protein in their milk that can be collected, purified and spun into the fibres. Females will begin mass-producing spider milk in the second quarter of this year for a variety of military and industrial uses.

Spider silk has long been admired by material scientists for its unique combination of toughness, lightness and biodegradability. Dragline silk, which comprises the radiating spokes of a spider web, is stronger than the synthetic fibre Kevlar, stretches better than nylon and, weight for weight, is five times stronger than steel.

These incredible qualities are the product of 400 million years of evolution. Now spider yarn has been spun by the US Army and the company Nexia Biotechnologies of Montreal, marking a milestone in efforts to ape arachnids.

The work "opens up a lot of things on the practical level and on a research level," said Dr Randy Lewis, a spider silk expert at the University of Wyoming, Laramie. Dr Jeffrey Turner, President of Nexia, said: "Mimicking spider silk properties has been the holy grail of material science and now we've been able to make useful fibres.

"It's incredible that a tiny animal found literally in your backyard can create such an amazing material by using only amino acids, the same building blocks used to make skin and hair."

Spider silk is a material science wonder, "a self-assembling, biodegradable, high-performance, nanofibre structure one-tenth the width of a human hair that can stop a bee travelling at 20 miles per hour without breaking. Spider silk has dwarfed man's achievements in material science to date."

Today, in the journal Science, the scientists describe details of the production of different dragline spider silk proteins. First, they turned cells from cows' lungs and baby hamster kidneys into silk protein "factories" by giving them genes from two different species of orb-weaving spiders whose dragline silks have been documented to be among the strongest

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Satanic killers tell of blood drinking rites
By Hannah Cleaver in Berlin
(Filed: 18/01/2002)

A WOMAN who says she and her husband killed a German friend with 66 knife wounds on orders from the devil has claimed that she became a satanist in Britain.

Manuela Ruda: 'I signed my soul to Satan'
German police say any evidence pointing to possible crimes or an illegal satanic ring in Britain will be sent to the relevant authorities.

Manuela Ruda and her husband, Daniel, have admitted killing their friend, Frank Haagen, "for Satan". She said she got a taste for vampirism and the occult while in London and Scotland.

She appeared at the regional court in Bochum in full gothic garb, her head partly shaved to reveal an upside down crucifix and a target tattooed on her skull.

Mrs Ruda, 23, gave a chilling account of drinking blood from volunteers contacted on the internet. She said: "I was in England and Scotland, met people and vampires in London. We went out at night, to cemeteries, in ruins and in the woods.

"We drank blood together, from willing donors. You can't drink from the arteries, no-one is allowed that. I had implanted pegs put in the teeth which were pulled out and were replaced with fangs.

"I also slept on graves and even allowed myself to be buried in a grave to test the feeling. I signed over my soul to Satan two and a half years ago."

The couple have denied responsibility for killing Mr Haagen, 33, although both have admitted committing the crime.

Mrs Ruda told the court: "It was not murder. We are not murderers. It was the execution of an order. Satan ordered us to. We had to comply. It was not something bad. It simply had to be. We wanted to make sure that the victim suffered well."

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