Replies to post #45177 on Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Inc (KBLB)

[first mike]

Dr. Malcolm Fraser: (the full quote)

"If it were not for Kraig Biocraft Laboratories initiating this project and bringing the technologies together these results may never have materialized."
"The work is the culmination of a research effort begun more than 10 years ago with an internal award from the University of Notre Dame to my lab to develop silkworm transgenics capabilities, a two year NIH R21 grant awarded to Dr. Jarvis, Lewis, and myself, and several years of supplemental funding from Kraig Biocraft Laboratories,"Fraser continued. "The success of this research would have been impossible without the ability to carry out silkworm transgenics, mastered by Bong-Hee Sohn and Young-Soo Kim in the Fraser lab at the University of Notre Dame. This manuscript was published after an in depth peer review process, and was deemed by the publishers as a newsworthy article of the issue in which it appears, further indicating its relative importance to science and technology."

itsallbull said:

There is a period separating two thoughts, with two separate quotes. Primarily integral to this was ND awarding Fraser's lab to develop silkworm transgenics capabilities. Secondarily integral was the grant awarded to Jarvis, Lewis and Fraser. Thirdly, less integral was supplemental funding from KBLB, which by the way any company could have supplemented this funding.
[ML- Yes, any company or individual Could have funded this work, but KBLB was the only company and Kim Thompson the only individual who Did fund this work because the idea of finding and bringing together all of the right individuals and organizations was Kim's.]
The main point is that the research would have been impossible without the ability to carry out silkworm transgenesis, which ND and Fraser's lab had (the ability).
Thus you are trying to take Fraser's quotes and derive that he is admitting that Kim Thompson is the reason this was possible.
When in fact this was not possible without PiggyBac and the award by Notre Dame to develop silkworm transgenic capabilities, [ML- The award by Notre Dame was NOT to develop silkworm transgenics, it was to develop tools for transgenic implantation. At the time of that award, 10 years ago, no one was looking at the possibility of spider/silkworm transgenics.] thus pointing directly NOT to KBLB, but the fact that this was only possible to do if you had the ability to carry out silkworm transgenics.

Notre Dame had that ability via PiggyBac

It can be confusing to a layman.

Do You mean that it can be confusing to a laymen to the logic of science, or to a linguistics layman?
Being a career scientist, and having written and edited and published many talks and papers and journal and magazine articles, I think that I am relatively well qualified in both fields.

The paragraph quoted above is from an interview/talk given by Dr. Malcolm Fraser, the lead scientist on this project at the University of Notre Dame and the inventor of the PiggyBAC transposon genetic engineering tool.
In it Dr. Fraser is attempting to give credit to the various organizations and individuals responsible for the extremely important and well received PNAS paper on transgenic silkworms.
While there are four separate sentences in this paragraph they all relate to the same purpose, apportioning credit for this breakthrough.
KBLB is mentioned first and separately from other contributors because Dr. Fraser wanted to make clear the seminal nature of KBLB's contribution.

"...Kraig Biocraft Laboratories initiating this project [silkworm transgenic chimeric spider silk]and bringing the technologies together".

This Project (the title of the PNAS Paper is "Silkworms Transformed with Chimeric Silkworm/Spider Silk Genes Spin Composite Silk Fibers with Improved Mechanical Properties.")
refers to the creation of transgenic Spider/Silkworms not to the success of the PiggyBAC composer tool. That tool was the subject of several earlier papers and patents.
Yes, that and other tools were needed to make this work, and the reference: "the ability to carry out silkworm transgenics, mastered by Bong-Hee Sohn and Young-Soo Kim in the Fraser lab"
is there to reward two graduate students who learned how to micro-inject silkworm eggs, another necessary skill. Other skills and tools were also required for success. The spider silk gene studies of Randy Lewis, the insertion and promoter sequence work of Dr. Jarvis, and some of these tools would not have been available without the ten years ago funding grants from UND and the NIH R21 grant.
But for THIS Project, the transgenic silkworm, KBLB's "initiating this project", "and several years of supplemental funding from Kraig Biocraft Laboratories", and KBLB "bringing the technologies [the various tools and skills] together", KBLB's involvement was Seminal and Necessary, else "these results may never have materialized."

Mike L. (no IMO here, these are actual facts based on actual quotes from Dr. Fraser the central academic figure behind this world changing accomplishment and world renowned peer reviewed paper.)