I don't know if Dr. Lewis is working on producing spider silk protein (SSP) in plants or not. He is developing an artificial protein which is a combination of motifs from both of the two main spider silk proteins (of the same spider KBLB got its gene to modify the Monster Silk worms from) Since Dr. Lewis has been working with KBLB for years and helped develop the Monster Silk worms I think it's reasonable to guess that this is probably the artificial sequence Kim was speaking of adding to spider silk in the following PR:
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Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: KBLB) announced that the Company, working in cooperation with leading laboratories, is synthesizing DNA sequences and genetic constructs for its second generation of advanced spider silk based polymers. The artificial DNA constructs which the company is creating were specifically developed with the technical textiles market in mind.
"These new designer DNA sequences are being rolled out as a part of our plan to build on our recent
success by creating new materials and new products," said Kraig's CEO Kim Thompson. "These new genetic constructs are being created right now, for use in the production of a new class of high performance fibers. We are developing this next generation of genetically modified silk fibers specifically to capture a share of the technical textiles market. This is the primary market for high strength fibers and is currently estimated at $120 billion. We believe that these revolutionary materials will have tremendous potential in the technical textiles marketplace for high strength fibers."
Dr. Lewis is first creating this protein in E. Coli (which is vastly easier to genetically modify and much faster to reproduce etc) and mechanically spinning it to do tests on. However the mechanical spinning is greatly inferior to that of silkworms and spiders. The SSP that Dr Lewis helped Nexia create in goat milk was artificially spun but only had 20 to 40% of the strength of spider silk. Since silkworm silk has 40% of the strength of spider silk that means that Nexia's product was no better than ordinary silkworm silk. So while he's using E Coli as a faster way to develop the protein I have no doubt that he will use KBLB to produce it in silkworms (Nexia no longer even exists and he is currently associated with KBLB).
Production of that protein in silkworms would be an example of the platform worm.
The platform worm concept is that, by having a set of zinc fingers that can be used to add ANY sequence to the proper location to be included in the silk, silk can be readily customized and adapted for any customers specific requirements within a very wide range of possibilities. That is a vastly larger potential than "mere" spider silk!
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