Dragline Silk KO Spider with Abnormal Phenotype

 Hello guys,

While working on with the thesis, I want to share a bit of the findings from my project about the abnormal phenotype observed in the edited spiderlings. Well, after a numerous painstaking analysis, I know could relate the abnormal phenotype obtained with the genotype profile. I did obtain variable phenotypic changes in the edited spiderlings in which one of them was the lost of proper molting ability during egg hatching. What baffled me was that I was not sure how this could relate to abnormal spidroin production no matter how deep I dug for the information even with the previous studies in insects etc..But something quite similar was observed in silkworms when the scientists knockouted out the fibroin gene that resulted in mutant larval-pupal chimera creation! Was it similar to this? Does messing with this dragline spidroin gene affect other physiological function of the spider during hatching? Hmm.. this need to be further elucidated more.. But not now since this is way beyond the scope of my project...But somehow, it was a very interesting observation that triggered me to deepen this study in the future~

 

The mutations occurred in abnormal fibroin producing mutant silkworms from Ma et al. (2014).

Ma, S., Shi, R., Wang, X. et al. Genome editing of BmFib-H gene provides an empty Bombyx mori silk gland for a highly efficient bioreactor. Sci Rep 4, 6867 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep06867