A bit more of an update on Entogenetics for you.
The violin is not in Japan.
Entogenetics was a US company, born and died in the research triangle area near North Carolina State University.
Brigham, the founder, is a biology professor there.
He used mostly student labor to build an awesome website but he never had the tools to accomplish his goals.
They managed to create a transgenic silkworm that produced SSP-1,
by random insertions but it was never properly incorporated into the silk.
They did not die because of any discovered flaw but because they did not have the PiggyBac transposon tools that Fraser/UND had.
They tried to make a deal with Sigma-Aldritch, were competing with KBLB for that, but while KBLB had a real potential product at that time and scientists (Davis, Fraser, Lewis) who were exceptionally knowledgeable about the workings of the spider and silkworm silk production process, Entogenetics had focused primarily on hype, false and misleading promotions (without disclaimers) about their future products.
Entogenetics was very similar to Spiber at that time, making statements about the wonderful qualities of spider silk and talking about how they were about to produce it without any real research successes behind them,
Sort of like Spiber telling the world that they were producing spider silk by the ton in 2015 without even being able to plan the factory that would produce it let alone fund it and without having ever produced even one ounce of fiber with spider silk like qualities.
One Famous bit of hype was a beautiful full color graph of stress vs. strain for spider drag line silk, silkworm silk, and two other fibers in between.
This was months before the real graphic comparisions were published in the PNAS paper by KBLB.
The better of these two composite fibers was twice as strong as silkworm silk and very near the strength of natural spider silk, and this was labeled as Entogenetics' product!
What they neglected to inform their readers about was that this "product" was in fact a goal that they hoped to achieve if given enough money and the proper tools.
They were LYING, because not being a publicly traded company,
they were allowed to LIE and get away with it.
That graph was later removed from Entogenetics' website because it became an embarrassment.
Remember that no one gave Fraser/KBLB the initial tools, Fraser developed them himself!
Unfortunately for Entogenetics, Sigma-Aldritch made a very thorough investigation of the two companies and on the basis of that investigation gave exclusive use rights to the ZF CompoZer tool set to Kraig Labs.
They declined to do business with Entogenetics, and from that point on Entogenetics was virtually doomed.
Mike L.
