Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Inc (KBLB)

[Eskaminagaga]

I remember looking at this a while back. It is one of the reasons why I started looking into the E.coli producers with more scrutiny. From the PNAS article:

The 96-mer fiber exhibited the tenacity of 508 ± 108 MPa and elongation of 15 ± 5%, which are comparable with the values reported for native N. clavipes dragline silk (740–1,200 MPa; 18–27%). Notably, Young’s modulus of the 96-mer fiber was 21 ± 4 GPa, twice that of the native dragline silk (11–14 GPa).

It looked like they had already achieved near the same properties as native dragline silk (on the low end). This compared to KBLB's PNAS article showing the strains of Monster Silk™ having up to only 338.4 ± 87.0 Mpa of max stress showed that the previous PNAS article had a stronger fiber. Of course, Kim did state that these values had improved.

I had been betting on the presumptively cost prohibitive nature of producing fibers from bacteria and the fact that KBLB is initially aiming for the mundane clothing market for its success. If KBLB can bring their new Dragon Silk to commercialization in a timely enough manner, then they should have nothing to worry about unless Spiber Inc. and others can significantly reduce the assumed cost to produce their silks.

It is also worth noting a couple names on the study. Namely David Kaplan, one of the world's leading scientists in Spider Silk based out of Tufts University and founder of Cocoon Biotech Inc. and Sang Yup Lee, one of the head researchers at KAIST. I remember reading somewhere that Spiber Inc. and KAIST are working together, but I asked at the QMONOS™ display if they were to confirm it, but they could not confirm nor deny if this was true. They did state that Spiber Inc. was working alone up until after the QMONOS™ fibers were developed at which point they started working with others, though. Knowing this, I don’t think that they actually used this technology. I have reason to believe that Spiber Inc.’s fibers will have stronger properties than this at commercialization, anyway.