Scientists backed by the U.S. Navy have created the world's first genetically modified spider. This achievement could pave the way to a new category of high-performance materials with major implications for defense, aerospace, and medicine.

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Why It Matters: Spider silk is known for its strength, flexibility, and light weight. It has outperformed materials like Kevlar in certain tests.

The military is especially interested in these properties for applications like lightweight body armor and radiation-resistant equipment. "We have demonstrated, for the first time worldwide, that CRISPR-Cas9 can be used to incorporate a desired sequence into spider silk proteins," said Scheibel.

This paves the path to spider silk that is not just durable, but also responsive, possibly capable of detecting toxins or altering shape with moisture.

However, there is still a long way to go before genetically modified spiders become a factory staple. Success rates for gene-editing are low, and they have spiders' cannibalistic tendencies, which make large-scale production challenging.

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