Module 7 Lesson 3 - 8

Lesson Summary

Spiderman might not exist in real-life, but spider goats do!  Some goats in Quebec have been altered genetically to produce spider silk in their milk. The spider silk gene was sequenced to find the DNA code and then inserted into the DNA of the goats in a way that it would be expressed in only the milk. These goat do not spin webs, but the silk definitely is usable.

Why might scientists want to do this?  What advantages and disadvantages do you see? Could this be done in humans? Could Spiderwoman actually exist? If you are interested, do some research on the "spider goats".

This lesson explained the steps involved in producing a protein from a section of DNA code (blueprint). Transcription of the DNA into mRNA in the nucleus must occur first. Then, the mRNA travels to the cytoplasm to ribosomes for translation to occur. During translation, the tRNA with complementary anticodons to the mRNA codons are matched. Each tRNA brings with it an amino acid and with the help of enzymes amino acids are bonded together and the coded sequence of amino acids is created. The next lesson presents changes in the genetic code and how these changes in DNA can affect the proteins being synthesized.