Artisans Angkor
When the worms have grown enough, they are put in baskets. From there, they will spin their cocoons in five days and will produce about three hundreds meters of silk each. The cocoons are then put in sunlight to avoid them undergoing their metamorphosis into mature moths. However, 20% of them reach the breeding process and the female moths will lay and hatch its eggs within nine to twelve days.
The cocoons are soaked in hot water in order to soften the sericin (also known as silk gum) which coat the fibres and stick the cocoons together. Silk threads are then unwound and reeled together to produce a single thread. Weavers at Angkor Silk Farm make both raw silk and fine silk that do not have the same texture at all. Sericin has not been completely removed from raw silk threads, which will give a rougher texture to the fabric at the end.
Kraig Biocraft Laboratories
The method used to genetically modify the silkworm uses the PiggyBac Transposon vector discovered and developed by Dr. Fraser at the University of Notre Dame. Specific sequences of spider silk DNA are inserted into the genetic makeup of the silkworm to create a strain of the insect that now produces the spider protein. They are able to customize the sequences that are inserted into the silkworm, thus giving the ability to customize the resulting silkworm's thread strength and flexibility. To ensure the silkworm has been genetically modified, a gene was attached that gave the transgenic silkworms red glowing eyes.
The thread produced by the transgenic silkworms is close to the strength and flexibility of the native spider. Strength relative to native spider silk is 80%. Kraig Biocraft Laboratories is not the first to create transgenic silkworms incorporating spider silk proteins. Where Kraig Labs has succeeded is that the spider silk proteins are integrated structurally into the transgenic silkworm fiber.