Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Inc (KBLB)

[GTman1]

Let me clear up any confusion anyone has in regards to how and why Spiber is pivoting.

The point of all these "spider silk" companies (Kraig Labs, Bolt, Spiber, Amsilk) is to produce a natural fiber with properties similar to spider silk. Spider silk isn't valueable just because it is a protein that comes from a spider. It is valueable because it has incredible properties that cannot be replicated by manmade materials.

Turning any protein into a fiber is not difficult at all. People have even made t-shirts from milk fiber. The catch is, these fibers are useless when it comes to their technical specs. But they are a novelty, I guess.

Spiber began by harnessing yeast and engineering the yeast to produce some spider silk analog proteins. Normally, spider silk is a very long chain of repeating amino acids, which give the spider silk its incredible properties. Spibers analogue fibers were much shorter, so they would not have the desirable properties of spider silk.

Furthermore, when Yeast or e. coli excrete proteins, they excrete thousands of different proteins. So when Spiber wants to make spider silk fibers, they first have to purify the broth in the bioreactor to extract the extremely small trace amounts of spider silk protein. This is very expensive, and one of the reason why human insulin and monoclonal antibodies are so expensive to make.

So what does Spiber do? they pivot away from spider silk protein all together. This way they can sell their "Brewed Protein" which is essentially them just harvesting all of the thousands of different types of proteins that yeast and bacteria produce. Sure, you can make a fiber out of this, but why? to say it's vegan? sure that's fine. But the fiber will no longer have any desirable properties that aren't already fulfilled by other natural and commercially available fibers. No one here should be fooled; Spiber and Bolt Threads are no longer in the "spider silk fiber" business.