Spider silk is one of the toughest materials and adaptable materials around. Spiders use this wonderfully flexible material to trap and crush prey and build durable webs. It's strong and elastic enough to stretch several times its original length.

Because of its enticing properties, spider silk could be used for a variety of practical applications like surgical sutures and body armor. Unfortunately producing mass amounts of the material that will make these spider-silk items is problematic. Farming spiders to produce silk isn't as easy as caring for sheep to produce wool. Spiders are territorial and cannibalism is a very serious concern. Spiders also don't produce enough silk to make spider farming a viable manufacturing approach. It would take 4 years and 1 million large spiders to make a piece of cloth that measures 11 feet by 4 feet.

The alternative is to make spider silk artificially. This method hasn't been successful as well. Scientists have cloned a number of spider silk proteins but they've only managed to create small amounts of the material. It's even harder turning the proteins into silk fibers. Now researchers have hit on one novel solution: use another animal that produces silk to produce spider silk.

Scientists from the University of Wyoming have genetically engineered some DNA with spider silk genes and injected them into the silk making glands of silkworms.

"Our hope was that by embedding spider-silk protein [gene] sequences within silkworm silk [gene] sequences, we could get those proteins to co-assemble ... into composite fibers and that is what happened," study co-author Don Jarvis, a molecular biologist, told National Geographic.

Silkworms are easy to farm and can be grown in bulk. Silkworms also have massive glands that turn silk proteins into fibers. While silkworms produce commercially appealing silk it doesn't have the strength and toughness of spider silk. The researchers inserted a hybrid DNA that had a central core from a spider silk protein with smaller fragments of a silk worm protein into silkworm eggs.

The process worked and the genetically modified silkworms produced silk that was 96 to 98 percent silkworm with 2 to 4 percent of fiber proteins coming from spiders. Even though the modified silkworms only produced a small percent of spider silk, the hybrid silk was still twice as tough as natural silkworm silk.

The team is working on taking the silkworm proteins out of the silk fibers. "The next step will be to produce silkworms that produce silk fibers consisting entirely of spider silk proteins," says Jarvis.

If the team succeeds, the stronger silkworm silk could be used in the medical sector for stronger sutures, implants and ligaments. The tougher silk could also be used as a substitute for toughened plastics.