You appear to be confounding two different tests.
Testing the genetic modifications using the zinc fingers take about a week INCLUDING THE TIME TO MAKE THE MODIFICATIONS (call it 5 go 10 days to give it a reasonable amount of slack, like I say all the time, timing is highly variable on most things biotech)
After a few hours or a day or two they can test to see if the genetic modifications were successful by removing one cell to test when the egg is still just 8 cells or more (this is done with IVF all the time and is dead routine). Thanks to PCR, one cell is all that's needed to see if the sequence was inserted (or in this case, removed) at the correct location. That's at just 8 cells in the first generation, only hours after the genetic modification (time enough for the cells to divide just three times). Nothing to send away, it can all be done in house.
So a week from Monday (i.e.: June 19 or 20) we should have the results from the ZF modifications. But don't forget to give it a little slack people, this IS research. The nice thing about holding long instead of trading in and out is that another day or two makes very little difference.
Testing the silk:
The silk can be tested from the cocoon stage from the FIRST generation (you don't have to harm the worm in any way to remove the cocoon. I suspect that you could remove a bit of it to test even while it is still spinning the cocoon without harming it. You can use electrophoresis or HPLC or any number of tests to separate the proteins and see if you get worm silk and spider silk or just spider silk ) Just test to see if there is only spider silk protein (= success!) or if there is still silkworm silk protein as well (highly unlikely! (impossible, really) if the GM knocked out the spider silk protein gene and you'd have already tested for that weeks before.) A few inches of silk would be enough for a strength and elasticity test (maybe not to quite as many significant digits as an outside test, but certainly enough to know if it's in the ball park).
All of that can be done in house. The only reason for sending it to an outside lab is to get an independent confirmation. Some will wait for that. They will also pay a considerably higher price for their shares, IMHO, but some people are willing to do that in return for what they perceive as a reduced risk. It's all about how you weigh the risks. Do whatever you feel comfortable with. Personally I cannot imagine that KBLB would either botch such simple routine tests or lie about them. Either would blow up in their faces and they know it.
Some may note an apparent contradiction here but it is not real: At the first news release of the Gen1 Monster Silk we were shown actual spools of silk. Obviously it took at least several generations of worms to get that much silk so it might appear that several generations were necessary to be able to test it. Not really. The reason that they went thru several generations of worms in that case was that the genetic modifications that were made were random and they selected the best of the lot (they probably did thousands of them) and bred them with each other trying to get worms that had the most and best of the various gene placements. (The effects of a gene are highly dependent on their location (how close they are, or aren't to a gene regulator, and whether it's in the right type of cell, whether it's wound around a histone and not available for transcripton, etc etc etc) So there would have been a wide variation between their effects.
Which is exactly why we saw 20 different lines of worms with widely varying silk quality. And at that point, to distinguish between the silks they needed accurate tests plus to evaluate their commercial appeal they needed experienced judgement.
But this time only one line of worm is being genetically modified. And to know whether or not it was successful we need only two tests:
1)the early test (5 to 10 days) of one cell from the 8 cell stage to test the DNA to see if the silkworm silk protein gene's sequence was successfully removed or not.
2)) the later test (FIRST generation: i.e.: exact same egg) at the early cocoon stage a tiny length of silk to test for spider silk protein and worm silk protein. No worm silk protein = success. A little more silk would give a relatively crude strength and elasticity test but for just for confirmation it's really spider silk a crude test is all that's needed. AFAICS that would just be icing on the cake.
We already have worms that can produce spider silk with worm silk mixed in with it. All that is necessary to get pure spider silk is to remove the worm silk gene. Once that is done it would be physiologically impossible for any worm silk to be mixed in with the spider silk. Connect the dots!
We know that zinc fingers have an extensive track record of successful genetic modifications in a wide range of microbes, animals and plants AND IN SILKWORMS so there is little doubt that the zinc finger modifications will work. (Unless someone just grabs the wrong bottle of reagent, in which case you just do it again)
By far the hardest part (showing that worms can process spider proteins into silk) has already been done. What remains is like the drive into the city from the airport after a transcontinental flight. And we will know very soon.
ADD IT UP:
Major breakthrough, product long thought impossible, attempted by very many without getting anywhere remotely close to success.
HUGE potential market
Absolute lock on IP (KBLB has the patents plus they can keep total control of all the breeding worms and just sell production worm eggs that couldn't be bred)
Still only a market cap of under $90 million and very little need for further dilution (profits should be rolling in with a year easy). A market cap of $9 billion (probably far less that pure spider silk would merit) and a dilution of 50% (highly unlikely IMHO) would give a 50 X gain.
The hardest by far part is already done. ZFs have already been shown to work in exact same species (the silkworm). KBLB is really just one step away here. Once they have a pure spider silk producing worm it;s all over but for the parade: the rest is dead routine: make it homozygous and multiply it to production levels.
