BIOTECHNOLOGY REAGENTS AND KITS MARKET ANALYSIS

Market Challenges And Opportunities

Global Biotechnology Reagents and Kits Market Drivers:

Growing demand for synthetic biology

• Supportive government policies associated with synthetic biology are key driving factors of the biotechnology reagents & kits market. Developed economies, such as the UK and the U.S., are actively engaged in providing funds for R&D initiatives in synthetic biology. For instance, in March 2021, a roundtable meeting was arranged by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. This initiative aims to explore synthetic biology and the associated science, policy, and industry capabilities. Government agencies such as the SynBERC (synthetic Biology Engineering Research Centre) and National Science Foundation (NSF) are instrumental in periodic synthetic biology evaluation.
• Moreover, synthetic biology is comparatively a new and unexplored technology. Industry participants dealing in this field, strive continuously toward developing proprietary and new technologies to increase market presence. This in turn is driving the growth of the global biotechnology reagents and kits market over the forecast period.

Global Biotechnology Reagents and Kits Market Opportunities:

• The advent of long-read sequencing has made sequencing of longer strands of DNA possible by only reading single DNA molecules, thus the key market players are engaged in launch of new products and this is expected to offer lucrative growth opportunities for players in the global biotechnology reagents and kits market. For instance, in March 2021, Oxford Nanopore Technologies introduced the Ultra-Long DNA Sequencing Kit that enabled efficient sequencing of read lengths of up to 4.2 Mb. Similarly, in May 2020, Oxford Nanopore announced the availability of the Native Barcoding Expansion (96) kit that is designed to deliver 96 barcodes for sequencing without PCR, which enables a large number of samples to run on a single flow cell. More recently, this kit is used for whole genome sequencing of COVID-19 causing virus. This product availability broadened the PCR-free sequencing capacity for minimal cost per sample.  

Global Biotechnology Reagents and Kits Market Restraints:

Challenges associated with the implementation of NGS

• The usage of sequencing technologies across various biotechnology fields is hindered due to several limitations that are associated with NGS technologies. Although NGS has paved way for clinical research, the solution for handling large data generated by NGS is still a great challenge. It is an ongoing research challenge for the compression of biological sequences in a way such that they can be easily accessible and stored. Although research is carried out for the development of the referential compression schemes to compress the data generated, the main challenges associated with it are scalability and compression rate. Handling of quality scores along with the sequence compression is another important factor to be considered. Such hurdles for the upcoming technology implementation are expected to restrain industrial growth to a certain extent. 

Risk pertaining to the usage of genetically modified food/crops

• Till date, due to their complex nature, a majority of biosystems have not been completely understood by scientists. This makes it difficult to predict the nature of an artificial organism or microorganism for food produced by a biotechnology-based experiment. This factor is expected to restrain the growth of biotechnology reagents & kits market up to a certain extent.
• On the other hand, farmers are adopting GM crops for several reasons such as increasing pesticide and herbicide resistance as well as increasing resistance against certain viruses or toxins. These modifications are mainly aimed at increasing farming profitability. Despite the huge success of GM crops, these are known to have certain potential side effects on organisms as well as the environment. The below figure demonstrates the negative impact of using GM food on the environment as well as on human health. These impacts are expected to hamper the use of GM products, thereby impeding the usage of reagents and kits in agricultural biotechnology applications.