By Peter Weiss
Silk cocoons could become puffs of valuable human proteins if a new bioengineering method developed by Japanese scientists pans out.
In the past few decades, various biotechnology research teams have devised ways to mass-produce medically or industrially useful proteins by modifying the DNA of organisms. The animals create the proteins in their cells, milk, urine, or eggs (SN: 4/6/02, p. 213: Scrambled Drugs: Transgenic chickens could lay golden eggs).