Biosecurity report!

Introduction

We know that the biosecurity is a fundamental part of any project. In our country, there are very few laws that regulate the Biosecurity in Synthetic Biology and the requirements of it are not well established. Because of that we decide to use a statistical tool named QFD, (Quality Function Deployment) or Quality House.

This tool is a process developed by Yoji Akao at Japan in 1960 and 1970. This quality management method is based in transforming the demands of the user in the quality of the design, implementing methods for achieving design quality in subsystems and components, and ultimately to the specific elements of the manufacturing process. Actually, QFD is a technic that is applied in several areas, such as consumer products, military needs, emerging technology products, marketing strategies, etc., and has showed satisfactory results because it allows the improvement of the processes.

We used the QFD for evaluating the Biosecurity actions and measures that were made in our Synthetic Biology Project and also implement these in upcoming projects.

Construction of our Quality House

First of all, we made a brainstorm in order to establish the requirements or criteria that must be accomplished according to the national normativity and international guides for projects of Synthetic Biology. With the same technique, the proposals of the team members of CINVESTAV-IPN-UNAM_MX for the Rhodofactory project were established.
The next step was to construct the main matrix with the needs and proposals in order to define the score of priorities according to some experts and the team members. (See Figure 1)

After that, we made a scale of relative score based on the dependence and correlation between the needs and proposals. Based on these values the Pareto Diagram was built. This technique was used to point out the measurements of more importance as necessity or proposal. Once the Pareto diagram was ready, we divided it in three parts for its analysis.

We used both, the Pareto Diagram and the interactions Matrix (roof of the quality House), for making an effort vs. impact diagram, this tool allow us to verify the functioning of the performed analysis.

Finally we used the Effort vs. impact diagram in order to implement the Biosecurity measures, which were pointed out as the most important of all the criteria.

Results

The following QFD diagram was built from the establishment of the needs and the ideas which were defined by the Synthetic Biology team for our project.

The Pareto diagram (See figure 3) shows the priorities, established by the team, to work in Biosecurity, the most important are:

The implications about releasing the GMO into the environment.

The Effort vs. Impact diagram (See Figure 4) shows the team’s interests and organizes the ideas as a conclusion.

Conclusions

• In this work we used the QFD because it defines our ideas and also involves compliance with the regulations of the Synthetic Biology projects.
  
  
• With the obtained diagrams, we decided that the iGEM competition project will be defended in biosecurity, considering the impact of the GMO’s in the society and the environment.
  
  
• In addition, it defines an approach that follows the criteria according to the percentage of importance, impact and effort.

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References
1.Jonathan Tucker and Raymond Zilinskas (2006). The promise and peril of synthetic biology. The new atlantis. P. 132-139.
2.Verma Dinesh; et al, (2009). Quality function deployment (qfd): integration of logistics requirements into mainstream system design. Systems Engineering Design Laboratory. Industrial and Systems Engineering. p.1-8.
3.Kelle Alexander (2009). Ensuring the security of synthetic biology—towards a 5P governance strategy. Syst Synth Biol 3:85–90.
4.Ley de bioseguridad de organismos genéticamente modificados. Nueva Ley DOF 18-03- 2005. Cámara de Diputados del H. Congreso de la Unión
5.Jhon L Sandford, How to use QFD? QUALITY PROGRESS JANUARY 2005 P: