Scientists can now edit spider genomes! What are the practical reasons to do this and can it make you into Spider-Man? 

A new study from the University of Bayreuth in Germany unveils the first CRISPR-Cas9 gene-edited spider.

Refresher: what’s CRISPR?

CRISPR-Cas9 won its inventors the 2020 nobel prize in chemistry. It is a gene editing tool that helps cut out or insert specific pieces of genomes, to “knock in” or “knock out” certain genes.

Why spiders why now?

Wasps and mosquitos have been edited in the past, but it took this long to figure out how to edit the spider genome because it is much more complex. On top of that, spiders are not the best lab animals. They are temperamental and cannibalistic, so they have to be housed individually.

One of the reasons researchers are interested in spiders is for their silk. Spider silk has many interesting research properties, you may have heard of it being five times stronger than steel – as you can imagine, being able to manipulate it would make for some interesting material applications.

What did this research team do?

The team injected a CRISPR gene-editing solution into the spider’s oocytes, which were then fertilized by another spider, which then led to genetically modified spiderlings!

As part of this experiment, the gene-editing solution contained Red fluorescent protein insert, so that the team would have an easy way to detect whether or not their experiment worked.

Essentially, this experiment functioned as a proof of concept study to show that we now have the ability to edit the correct sequence of spider silk protein.

Are we one step closer to spider-man?

Maybe closer to making spider-man’s red suit? Certainly this discovery is promising for materials science. I’m excited to find out all the new ways we can modify spider silk.

As covered on the Daily Tech News Show on June 10th 2025. For a more detailed discussion of the topic, listen here:

Media: https://www.uni-bayreuth.de/en/press-release/gene-editing-spiders

Paper DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202502068