Replies to post #132069 on Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Inc (KBLB)

[yankeeclipper]

jazz710 - Thank you for that answer.

As a layman not having a in depth understanding of genetics and biology I was asking myself the same question as GTMan.

Why and how after 7 years of breeding millions of chimeric silkworms, creating 25+ distinct silkworm lines, ramping up production using large commercial platform (LCP) silkworms did genetic drift happen ?? And the breakthrough just PR'd is we've just discovered the problem now and know how to prevent it ??

Tech textiles demand exacting consistency and quality.

Penny wise/pound foolish has been Kim's mode of operation. Seems to have extended to all the heralded lab results over all these years. Shareholders are paying the price.

It's going to be a long road to pps recovery in 2018-IMO.

Best regards - yankee

[bananarama]

Hi Jazz,

I would have thought the microbiologist would have caught these inconsistencies......

[es1]

Jazz can you explain how taking a MS worm and crossing it with a mundane worm wouldn't weaken the strain?

Wouldn't you end up with offspring that are a mix of "pure MS" producers, and "non MS" producers along with others with lessor percentages of spider protein in the silk?

[GTman1]

Thanks for your reply Jazz, and sorry for the delay. I'm traveling and have shoddy service.

Sloppy husbandry. Someone mixed the worms up and didn't keep up regular testing, even though it's a simple test.

That was my first thought as well.

But I think we should leave the possibility open that this was for the hybridization for the vietnam/ms strain that Kraig Labs said they would start to attempt in the 2017 Q2 newsletter sent on 8/7/2017. He states...

We are also looking at cross breeding our silkworms with Vietnamese silkworm lines ahead of the transfer.

It could very well be that there was no negligence by the staff, the different strains are completely isolated from each other, and original lines are intact. But during their hybridization of the MS line and the Vietnam commercial worm, they were having trouble keeping within their performance parameters. This could also explain that strange sentence about delays once the "other commercialization plans fall into place." (probably meaning Vietnam commercialization plans). And it verywell could take "quarters" for them to figure out how to not lose too much tensile strength during the hybridization process.

I know these are big IFs, but I don't think we have all the evidence to automatically assume it was sloppy husbandry.

On another note, I doubt this has anything to do with the Army contract. Those ETF lines that they just custom created are brand new. I'm sure there is constant testing being done and I don't think nearly enough time or generations have passed to be exposed to genetic drift.