Great post from Zincfinger on yahoo board--"KBLB's very high base value":
KBLB owns IP rights in over 200 spider genes in the silk producing pathways and license agreements with ND, UW and SIAL.
All of these have very high value, proven and established by the PNAS study. It's been shown that zinc fingers work in the silkworm. Zinc fingers can remove genes, add genes and (as shown by yesterday's SIAL news) can add genes and/or regulate genes to be expressed only in selected tissues.
Gene expression array chip technology is available: a gene array chip can be made of all of the genes expressed in the silk production pathways (by using expressed sequence tags). That makes it easy to determine what effects the addition or removal or regulation of genes is having.
Not only does that make it vastly simpler and more routine to adjust the qualities of the silk produced, it also makes identification of any problems thing might arise easy and routine: If a new GM causes problems use the gene expression array chip to see what new proteins are being expressed and what old ones are not - that identifies the source of the problem and adding, removing or changing the expression of genes to solve it is simple and routine using zinc fingers.
Many companies are spending huge amounts of money in a futile attempt to do mechanically what KBLB is on the verge of doing biologically, thanks to zinc fingers.
IF KBLB should run into extreme financial difficult any number of companies would be glad to either partner with or buy out KBLB. THAT gives a solid underlying value to the company that should provide excellent protection against failure.
This is an entirely new ball game: previously genetic modifications were very difficult to do, expensive, highly problematical of success and took a very long time. EVERYTHING about that has changed due to zinc fingers: genetic modifications are now routine and exact AND CAN BE EXPRESSED ONLY IN THE DESIRED TISSUE! (That is every bit as important and huge an advance and being able to insert sequence in exactly the location desired.) No more guessing and long desperate searches to find out what went wrong when something doesn't work as planned: just use the gene expression array chip: fast, inexpensive and routine.
There's still some uncertainty remaining (and always will be) but the overwhelming majority of the uncertainties have been removed:
1) how to get the sequence EXACTLY where you want it - use ZFs
2) how to get it expressed ONLY in the tissues you want it to be - use ZFs
3) how to know exactly what gene products are and are not being expressed (use the gene expression array chip)
That plus KBLB's IP rights (ESPECIALLY the exclusive use of SIALs zinc fingers in silkworms!) gives KBLB an overwhelming advantage in the development of spider silk.
It will take time (and none of us knows enough to know how much). BUt it WILL happen. Because the tools are there and the product is immensely valuable and sought after.
AI
