Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Inc (KBLB)

[rayovac812]

how the product measures up,

Credit Zincfinger(from elsewhere)

Why Big Red news will be MUCH bigger than just a fiber better than spider silk:

It's not remotely just about the strength, nor about the elasticity nor even about the elasticity AND the strength. It's about how they are decoupled and can be systematically varied independently of each other which can't be done with any other known material.

[FOR THOSE NOT FAMILIAR WITH MATERIALS TECHNOLOGY: It's not a question of just getting the best possible (most extreme) of each property: strongest possible, most elastic possible etc. Technical products need material with properties that are IN BALANCE with each other and in the appropriate range for an application. To get an idea of how that applies, consider thread used to stitch clothing together: it's always deliberately considerably weaker than the threads/fibers used to weave the cloth and there is a very good reason for that: if something fails, you want it to be readily repairable. If the thread that holds it together is what fails, the cloth is intact and repair is easy and it can be restored to "as new" condition. If the cloth fails you are left with, at best, an ugly patch. Many other such considerations apply in high tech design. What you want for a particular product is an optimal combination of properties (of elasticity and strength) for that particular product and that will vary from product to product.

In all materials we know about but ONE (spider silk) the elasticity and strength are highly connected so that changing one changes the other in a set fashion. Think of a graph with elasticity on one axis and strength on the other: With most materials you get a line across the graph (of how the elasticity changes when you change the strength or vice versa) - You can get a material with a combination of elasticity and strength that falls on that line, but any combination that does not fall on that line is out of reach. If the combination you need is not on the line, you're out of luck.
But spider silk's structure has a totally unique property: the strength is almost entirely determined by one protein and the elasticity by another (i.e.: strength and elasticity are "decoupled" in spider silk unlike in any other known material) THAT MEANS THAT YOU CAN CHANGE ONE WITHOUT AFFECTING THE OTHER (within limits, of course) So the potential combinations will cover a very large area (not merely a line) of the chart.

If you make technical fibers that has MASSIVE implications: no longer do you have to settle for "the best approximation you can get" (which may be pretty sub optimal) when it comes to elasticity and strength: you can SPECIFY your optimal combination and have KBLB make a fiber with that particular combination (again, within limits, but much broader limits than is currently possible.

So for any technical fiber application for which there is not a current fiber available with the combination of strength and elasticity close to your need, KBLB is your source: they can design the sequence, add it to silkworms and have them produce a fiber with the combination you need.

Monster Silk demonstrated that KBLB can add spider silk genes to silkworms to get improved silk.

But Big Red, if the mechanical tests meet anything like expectations, will prove something far more significant.

What KBLB is doing with Big Red is altering the sequence in a designed approach to alter the mechanical properties in a predetermined way (i.e.: increase the strength while reducing the elasticity).

The implications for the technical fiber industry are massive: to date, construction of new fibers has taken a huge amount of research for each individual new fiber on pretty much of a one-off basis, most especially when it comes to combinations of elasticity and strength: This is not merely about "yet another technical fiber". It is about the ability to create new technical fibers to meet particular specifications in a way that was not previously possible.

This is WAY bigger than Kevlar or any other single technical fiber. This is about a major improvement in the entire sector.