Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Inc (KBLB)

[Eskaminagaga]

i think one of they key points is that that pnas was published over 5 yrs ago...something tells me that they have moved forward more than just a little bit...

I completely agree. One of the advantages of using microorganisms over silkworms is the fact that a new generation of them with a new genetic variant can be ready to test over a much shorter time than in silkworm colonies. This allows them to develop at a higher rate of speed and test their developments.

That is not to say that everything is sunshine and rainbows. The disadvantage of their method is that they have to forge their own paths, pouring millions into developing new technology to spin the proteins or find uses for the proteins once developed. KBLB just needs to get the silkworms created, then let them breed like any other silkworm to create stronger fibers. It takes longer, sure, but I believe that much money will still be made with this method creating fibers stronger than had previously been created.

Even if a company such as Spiber Inc. developed a fiber with similar properties as the new Dragon Silk (which i believe is the case), I still think that there will be enough demand, especially initially, for every fiber that is produced with superior qualities.

It also remains to be seen if there are other advantages to using silkworms over bacteria, possibly the ability to easily incorporate nanotubes into the silk as seen with spiders in a recent article:

Here, we report the production of silk incorporating graphene and carbon nanotubes directly by spider spinning, after spraying spiders with the corresponding aqueous dispersions. We observe a significant increment of the mechanical properties with respect to the pristine silk, in terms of fracture strength, Young's and toughness moduli. We measure a fracture strength up to 5.4 GPa, a Young's modulus up to 47.8 GPa and a toughness modulus up to 2.1 GPa, or 1567 J/g, which, to the best of our knowledge, is the highest reported to date, even when compared to the current toughest knotted fibres. This approach could be extended to other animals and plants and could lead to a new class of bionic materials for ultimate applications.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-spiders-carbon-nanotubes-superstrong-webs.html#jCp