Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Inc (KBLB)

[Money4Nothing-M4N]

German article dated august 3rd.
Kraig mentioned.

Translation below

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/spinnenseide-wunderfaeden-vom-achtbeiner-1.2073243



A silk armor for soldiers or medical implants: spider silk seems researchers as nearly perfect material to make such inventions possible. If only the production would not be so terribly complicated.

By Andrea Hoferichter
Spider polarize. For some, they are Ekeltiere, for others a fascinating. Some see them as a deity, and in some places the eight-legged friends are popular as a delicacy. Fritz Vollrath of the UK's University of Oxford, she finds attractive in its own way. He is interested in the unique material, produced from spinning their webs. "Spider silk is extremely lightweight, thinner than a hair, stronger than steel and more elastic than rubber. Moreover, it is biocompatible and biodegradable," says the scientist. With an evolutionary development of more than 350 million years ago the protein strands to the most most advanced twisting count at all. This also affects the energy consumption: A spider has only one thousandth of the energy that is necessary for the production of a comparable plastic thread.

For many years, the extraordinary properties of spider silk capture the imagination of scientists, engineers and companies . Gradually, the visions sort in feasible and hopeless. In the discussion were the most diverse applications: from bulletproof silk underwear for soldiers biodegradable fishing nets and ropes à la Spiderman to medical implants. The threads do not need to stick so as the networks that have torn the forest walk. The liability is a question of the protein mixture. For researchers from the Medical University of Hanover, however, is just sticking an incentive. You try as you might have along the sticky silk grow new neural pathways.

Only recently reported Vollrath's Oxford team in the journal Advanced Materials , spider silk could also help new sensors, for example for hearing aids to develop. Researchers have found that the threads of a spider's web vibrate in many different frequencies as different highly strained strings of a guitar. At the vibrations feel the spider, where and what prey depends. In a hearing aid, the threads might help to forward the received and amplified sounds from the environment which can not possibly towards eardrum.

Microbes, plants, caterpillars and even goats to help create spiders proteins

The fact that the use of the fabulous material yet succeeded no breakthrough has mainly one reason: The silk can be produced only with difficulty. Spiders themselves are not suitable for production, because masses held in a confined space, they would be eating each other. Therefore, researchers are trying microbes to move plants, caterpillars and even goats using genetic engineering methods for spiders protein production. Large chemical companies such as BASF and Dupont have a report in the magazine Chemical and Engineering News , according to their production trials, although now discontinued because it was not fast enough. But smaller companies are optimistic about the future and even present the first products.

The University of Munich in Planegg for example, the start-up company AMSilk sold recently a skin cream. Although it does not contain any threads, but after spider silk proteins that are produced by genetically engineered gut bacteria. "The proteins are a good water tank and replace fats that are normally included in creams," says company founder Thomas Scheibel, who now works at the University of Bayreuth. They also form a film on the skin, on the can settle no bacteria or fungi. This makes them interesting for people with eczema.


They resist moisture and coldness, they are hard to break: threads of spider silk are a fascination for researchers and entrepreneurs. (Photo: Daniel Mihailescu / AFP )
AMSilk and the University of Bayreuth in addition working on with silk proteins coated, extremely well tolerated breast implants. "Preclinical studies have been very successful," says Scheibel. The results of the researchers in the journal at the beginning of Advanced Functional Materials published. Then the smooth silk layer can prevent painful scarring around the implant. Inflammation and rejection reactions were less frequent than in uncoated implants. The wound-healing effect of spider silk has been known since ancient times. Aristotle, for example, is said to have nursed rabbit hair bleeding with a mixture of cobwebs, incense, aloe vera, egg whites and a pinch.

Spiderman doing it wrong: The thread must be pulled, not pushed

Meanwhile, the Bavarian young entrepreneurs have more than 40 different protein variants in store and master claims to the fine art of spinning fibers from it. Ten years it took us in hand and some copied from the biological model. "Spiders keep the silk proteins in their silk gland in an aqueous solution and then convert them to fractions of a second in a fiber around," says the biochemist. The Spider's trick succeed with a specific salt addition and at a slightly acidic pH. The mechanics during spinning has to be right. The thread must be pulled and not simply pushed out. " Spiderman makes it just wrong, "he says. The new artificial silk thread will now be just as durable as the original. A first fabric from the spin silken threads will AMSilk later than the end of the present year. The list of interested companies is long.

The American company Kraig from Michigan on the other hand wants to make a spinning thread-like product reprogrammed silkworms money. A first glove was presented in mid-June. The pilot phase of silk production was completed successfully explains the company, now it was necessary to ramp up production to industrial quantities. And at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, United States, researchers are testing to Randy Lewis as well as bacteria and caterpillars also genetically engineered alfalfa as a silk producer, a crop which is typically grown as cattle feed. Also, they want to reap the silk proteins from the milk of goats. However, only the bacteria from caterpillars are ripe for a first pilot plant. "For all other method is currently still no breakthrough in sight," Lewis admits.

The transgenic goats are already known rather as an example of failures in terms of artificial silk production. The Canadian biotechnology company Nexia, the presented method over ten years ago for the first time, igniting a discussion of ethics is already gone bust. And also one of those days were promised Products, a special light version of a bulletproof vest, has now turned out to be a failure. Fritz Vollrath explains why: "So a vest would be much too elastic, you would stop the ball, but only if it is already through the body.."