It was on a different board. Here it is in it's entirety. It is the only one I can find where costs are discussed..... if it was on this board, then someone with search capabilities could find it. He made the point and does not want to prove he knows what he is talking about. So I would assume the opposite.
Spider silk production and diet
Hi Zinc,
Happy to see you posting here again.
Spider silk protein is composed almost entirely of two essential amino acids (which cannot be made within the organism and MUST be derived from the diet) that are at high levels in spiders diets (because they eat insects) but at low levels in silkworm's diets (because they eat leaves). Sillk constitutes about 50% of the combined weight of worm plus cocoon. That means that the level of these two proteins the worms need in their diets to make spider silk is vastly higher than in their natural environment.
I understand what you are saying here and Was concerned about the same seeming dilemma a while back.
However I think that the picture you paint based upon this conjecture is somewhat too dark.
Here are four reasons why:
1) Amsilk had this same metabolic problem with e,coli a few years back and claims to have solved it .
I expect that KBLB's geneticists are at least as good as Amsilk's and therefore capable of solving it also.
2) It should be possible to nutritionally enrich the MS worms' worm chow diet if needed.
Purina would probably be happy to do it for them
This would raise feed costs somewhat,but I believe there is ample room in the profit equation for that.
3) if you examine the amino acids in ordinary silk you will find that it is already rich in these base pairs.
since MS is only 5 to 10% spidroin the extra amounts needed are not that large, nowhere near " about 50% of the combined weight of worm plus cocoon." Not "vastly higher".
4) It is obvious from the fact that KBLB has produced at the Absolute Minimum tens to hundreds of pounds of MS of sufficient quality and consistency for Warwick Mills to use in successfully knitting gloves and jersey fabrics, that the problem Has been Solved at least on the medium scale for Monster Silk(TM)
This means that the genetic metabolism modifications have been made and are good enough for the higher levels found in MS. Not yet good enough for BR or DS perhaps,but we have indications that if there is more of a problem with these products it is being addressed with some expectation of near term success.
I am certain that with your background you would agree that even if only 5% of the DS worm colony is producing high quality Dragon Silk(TM) that is sufficient for continued selective breeding to make their traits of metabolism or whatever
homozygous throughout the colony.
