Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, the biotech company focused on the development and commercialization of spider silk, has delivered the first two hybrid-cross Dragon Silk™ strains to its third-party production partner in Vietnam.
These strains were developed to address the most significant immediate hurdle to large-scale production: the robustness of silkworms within the large-scale production environment. These new lines are the first of several planned silkworm strains in the hybridization program, which are explicitly designed to increase robustness and cocoon size.
These strains blend the mechanical performance of the company’s original Dragon Silk with the size and robustness of native production silkworm strains. The lab also engineered these strains as part of its development program to bring needed increased resiliency to the large-scale production environment.
Best practices employed by the most advanced silkworm egg production facilities include utilizing a multi-line cross-mating protocol to generate increased robustness. The result of first-generation cross-matings yield larger cocoons and more resilient silkworm offspring. As these increased performance attributes only last one generation, it is vital that central silkworm egg production operations sustain each of these separate lines in order to create successive generations of hybrid crosses.
Kraig Labs begins its transition to multi-line cross-mating with these two new hybrids. Once established at the production facilities, the Company will start cross-matings to produce our first two-line production hybrids. Kraig Labs believes this will strengthen its production operations, increase silkworm resiliency, and significantly improve environmental tolerance.
“Work with our production partner in Vietnam has accelerated the identification of challenges and opportunities in scaling up production to metric tonnage levels,” said Company COO Jon Rice. “We are very pleased to announce the delivery of these new hybrid lines and we are excited about our ongoing development of the four-line hybrid-cross. The implementation of the four-line hybrid program is designed to deliver significant improvements in production capacity and yield,” he concluded.
