[patcon]

Yes, everyone wants their startup to make big bucks, but how do you do get to the stage of the startup's cheap rapid iteration trope when reagents cost an arm and a leg. There might not be big cash in the domain of cheap reagents, but I would humbly suggest this must be disrupted before biotech gets really exciting. Or at least that we need to consider that maybe it's a foundational need that should take some precedent :)

[pcrh]

So, what can start-ups do to reduce their costs?

For one, they should focus on areas where the reagents are not expensive, e.g. identifying novel natural biological extracts with new activities, consumer genetics (as in 23 and me), or areas such as horticulture. They should avoid things like stem cells and drug development (as opposed to discovery).

[icegreentea]

I should point out that the star of the article (open source taq polymerase) is the bread and butter of genetics research. It is what makes PCR - pretty much the standard way of doing DNA amplification (which any genetics research requires) work.

As it stands now, taq isn't ridiculously expensive, but surely open sourcing will reduce the barrier.