Stronger silk to make parachutes, artificial limbs!?

Spider-Man's web-shooters can create yards and yards of spider silk, but in real life, making such a strong, stretchy rope hasn't been easy.

Now, science has come one step closer to fiction with silkworms that spin spider silk.

New genetically modified silkworms produce cocoons incorporating the stretchier, stronger fibers spiders use to spin their webs, according to a new study. 

"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," said study co-author Don Jarvis, a molecular biologist at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.

Spiders create the best silk in terms of strength and elasticity. But many species are territorial or cannibalistic, making them difficult to farm.

That's why researchers have tried to insert spider-silk protein gene sequences into other products, such as goats' milk and hamster cells.

To make sure the genetic transformation was a success, the scientists also added green fluorescent protein to the eggs, so that successfully engineered silkworms would glow under blue light.

Surprisingly, the worms' silk glands glowed even under normal light—which is "totally amazing," said Jarvis, whose study appeared this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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