Abstract

Enzymes are critical for all synthetic biology research and every molecular diagnostic test, making them vital tools for global health. However, enzymes are primarily manufactured in Europe, North America, and parts of Asia and, most often, require a cold distribution chain for stability. This means that they can be expensive and unreliable to ship to other parts of the world. This has been a longstanding problem for researchers building diagnostics and biosensors and supply chains broke down further under the pressure of COVID .. As a response to the need to distribute the means of enzyme production and to enable more equitable access to synthetic biology, we developed several opensource DNA toolkits which are now in >500 labs in >40 countries, including universities, research institutions and small biotech companies. I will present the development and impact of these toolkits and the potential for distributed manufacturing of enzymes and other reagents to catalyse synthetic biology for global health: increasing the autonomy and agency of synthetic biologists to tackle health challenges wherever they are based in the world.