The material is collected from silkworms, dissolved and then allowed to reform.

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There, she scooped up swatches of cotton, linen, denim and imitation silk--the real stuff is unkind to silkworms--and took them to Italian shoemakers.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Breakthroughs came in the early 1990s, when researchers at several academic labs succeeded in teaching organisms, such as silkworms, to produce proteins that look exactly like strains of HPV.

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Traditionally an important role for women in the economy of rural regions, silk-making encompasses planting mulberry, raising silkworms, unreeling silk, making thread, and designing and weaving fabric.

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In the ponds that dot the villages, silkworm waste is fed to fishes, while mud from the ponds fertilizes the mulberry trees, and the leaves in turn feed the silkworms.

UNESCO: Culture

Her family cannot afford to go to the city hospital in Bangalore, so her husband, who raises silkworms that he warms under lamps, decides to care for the baby in the same way.

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The BGI has already solved the genomes of rice, cucumbers, soyabeans and sorghum, honeybees, water fleas, pandas, lizards and silkworms, and some 40 other species of plant and animal, along with over 1, 000 bacteria.

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