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The Synthetic Biology value chain

• We have categorised the synthetic biology value chain into three parts: an idea of the product to be produced; the engineering steps of design, build, test repeated until the desired product is produced; and a scale-up process to produce enough product for it to be usable as a product in its own right, or within other industries.
• The synthetic biology value chain interacts with the value chains in other sectors through i) absorption, where parts or all of the value chain of synthetic biology are used themselves within a sector-specific company, and ii) selling in, where a product is designed through synthetic biology in a company and sold into the production step of a specific sector.

Barriers

• Economic factors, such as synthetic biology being seen as risky and expensive by investors, and social factors around possible problems of social acceptability of synthetic biology products tended to be the biggest concern of companies.
• While barriers affect companies at all stages of the value chain, the most numerous barriers and challenges emerge at the scale-up stage of the value chain.

Standards

• Companies think that standards will help reduce uncertainty and help to overcome a variety of barriers they encounter en-route to commercialisation. In setting standards the community needs to make sure it does not lose sight of the importance of 'soft' standards, which can facilitate norms and behaviours within the sector, as well as affect how synthetic biology is perceived by society.