Replies to post #115523 on Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Inc (KBLB)

[Eskaminagaga]

It is not quite as strong as natural spider silk, but it looks like Sweden's Spiber Technologies AB are able to make pretty strong fibers that are almost as good.

[imelcooler]

"Today they report that they can produce kilometer long threads that for the first time resemble real spider silk."

First time?

"In the future this may allow industrial production of artificial spider silk for biomaterial applications or for the manufacture of advanced textiles," says Anna Rising.

In the future?

[igotthemojo]

hmmm..these people can approximate real spider silk with their spinning process..bolt threads and the others are apparently already well into the process of mass production, but cant yet produce anything that approximates real spider silk..

what if they join forces, do a licensing agreement or simply buy their process?..

as ive said before, once one can produce something close to real spider silk with the flick of a switch, kblb's horse and buggy operation is toast...unless perhaps, they are already well established..

[jazz710]

From the full text:

The as-spun NT2RepCT fibers had a qualitatively similar stress:strain behavior to native spider silk in that they displayed an initial elastic phase up until a yielding point, after which plastic deformation occurred. The mechanical characteristics of the fibers were highly reproducible, although the toughness and ultimate tensile strength were lower than in native silk (Supplementary Fig. 7; Supplementary Table 2). One possible way to increase the toughness could be to spin NT2RepCT fibers with diameters closer to that of native dragline silk, as this apparently has an impact on the mechanical properties of silk fibers. The toughness of NT2RepCT fibers (45 MJ/m3) is, to the best of our knowledge, by far the highest hitherto reported for as-spun fibers.