Techtextil Nort America

Free membership

Receive our weekly Newsletter
and set tailored daily news alerts.

Research/​Development/​Education

Kraig Biocraft develops new capability reducing time to market

The company has announced that its R&D team has achieved a major breakthrough in the construction of DNA encoding for spider silk proteins.

30th May 2018

Innovation in Textiles
 |  Ann Arbor, MI

Clothing/​Footwear, Protective

“The announcement is another in a long history of Kraig Labs proving the impossible, possible,” said Jon Rice, COO. “From our first transgenic silkworms, to the creation of Monster Silk and then Dragon Silk, to obtaining approvals for international expansion, the Company has proven, time and time again, that we have the tenacity to reimagine what is possible.”

“These new constructs and the ability to rapidly adapt them could open new and wider applications in military and high performance technical textile markets. Today we celebrate yet another example of how the company is changing the rules in biotech development.”

The new protocols were developed after Kraig Labs reached out to leading DNA synthesis facilities, which all stated that construction of the desired sequences would be practically impossible, due to the unique structure of spider silk proteins. Kraig’s research team then took on the task directly.

Using a combination of distinct approaches, Kraig Labs successfully synthesised the highly complex set of spider silk protein construct designs. This new approach should accelerate the pace of its research and production rollout efforts, as well as reduce costs to develop new transgenics for new potential markets and applications, the company reports.

The newly designed protein constructs are currently being prepared for incorporation into the company’s spider silk platform technology.  Due to their construction, these new designs may have the potential to produce new silk fibres with even greater strength and flexibility than the company’s current generation of recombinant spider silk.

www.kraiglabs.com

Latest Reports

Business intelligence for the fibre, textiles and apparel industries: technologies, innovations, markets, investments, trade policy, sourcing, strategy...

Find out more