AS Spider-Man fans queue up to see the latest Hollywood comic-book adaptation to swing into cinema screens, TV's best known science programme is taking a look at how realistic the film is. By investigating the science behind the birth of the web-slinging superhero, Tomorrow's World tries to answer every young boy's question: 'Could I be Spider-Man?'.

For producer Steve Crabtree making the programme was a dream come true. A self-confessed comic book 'nerd' since he was a boy, Crabtree says that Spider-Man creator Stan Lee "was the one person in the world I've always wanted to meet and I got to".

Lee is no expert on science, but his creation has been the inspiration for many a burgeoning interest in the subject, including Crabtree's. It's the believability of Spider-Man - both of his character and the science behind his creation - that has kept generations of kids enthralled with the hero's adventures for 40 years.

"Stan says he's not scientifically minded, he's a science fiction fan. But he wanted to make Spider-Man's transformation believable," says Crabtree. "In the 1960s the best way to do that was use radioactivity. It gave it a pseudo-scientific edge as people had been talking about radioactivity mutating things."

To update the story for the 21st Century, Spider-Man director Sam Raimi has changed the cause of rookie reporter Peter Parker's (Tobey Maguire) transformation to a bite from a genetically-modified spider. So the Tomorrow's World team looked at the process of passing genes from one species to another.

They went to Caltech, the California Institute of Technology, where scientists are experimenting with genetic modification in order to create animals with medicinal value. To see if genetic modification is possible, they created mice that glow by giving them genes from a fluorescent jellyfish.

"To do this they use a modified retro virus, one with all the bad stuff taken out of it," explains Crabtree. "Then they put the jellyfish gene into it and give the virus to a single cell embryo of a mouse.

"Normal viruses, like a cold, stay in your body for a bit then leave. But retro viruses, like HIV, become part of your DNA and alter the way your body works. The positive side is that if you use a retro virus and put genetic information into it then put that virus into a creature, its DNA will then take on whatever attributes you put in that virus.

"What we speculate is if the spider that bites Peter Parker had a retro virus, then he would take on the genes of a spider. What they would do to him no-one knows but theoretically it is a possibility."

Spider-Man's powerful "spider-sense" is more of a reality, however. In real-life it's called "implicit memory" and is something that firefighters and other emergency workers are sometimes trained to hone in order to recognise and deal with dangerous situations quickly and efficiently.

"We looked at this virtual reality system that's a training tool for firefighters," says Crabtree. "They sit in front of it and run through scenarios over and over again. It gives them visual clues and teaches them to fine tune their sense of danger.

"There was one experienced firefighter who, through this system, was looking at a fire in a factory and after being told there were two people still in there, immediately worked out where they were. People say it's an intuitive sense but you can actually train yourself to spot danger and make decisions more effectively."

As for Spidey's ability to produce super-strong spider silk, it's the Holy Grail of the science world. Spider silk is the strongest, most adaptable material on the planet and scientists have long been racing to recreate it artificially and reap the obvious rewards.

"If there was some spider's web strong enough to lift up an average person it would only be a millimetre thick," says Crabtree. "And if you could make web as thick as your little finger, it could stop a jumbo jet in mid-air.

"So if someone did invent a way of replicating it artificially, the world could change. Take suspension bridges, for example, you could suspend them with something that's a few millimetres thick rather than two feet. It could change architecture and loads of other things overnight."

Crabtree also found the film has been pushing the boundaries of science with technological advances in costume design and computer effects. Rather than go for the bulky suit that exaggerated Bruce Wayne's muscles in the Batman films, the costume designers created something that accentuated Maguire's already beefed-up physique.

"They used a load of processes that had never been done before," says Crabtree. "Really it's an elaborate dance costume as they used the same materials as ballet dancers. But it went through a computer process that put this grid on it to give it a 3D effect and enhance the muscles."

So while it was possible to bring Spider-Man to life on screen by pushing the ever-developing CGI (computer generated image) technology - the film is the limit of what you can do at the moment with CGI - the prospect of there being a real-life Spider-Man is still science fiction.

"Technology could allow it in that there are machines that enable people to climb up walls and people can be taught to spot and assess danger," says Crabtree. "Doing it genetically, however, the implications are huge - we're talking about experimenting on people. But maybe one day someone will try it."

l Tomorrow's World: The Science Of Spider-Man is on tomorrow at 7pm