Major Qualifying Project
MQP stands for a major qualifying project where this is where I take the 3 years of knowledge I have built around Mathematics and a little in computer science to build a project.
In the project, I worked in a team of three including myself and we focused on mathematical modeling applications toward skeletal muscle contraction with the addition of myasthenia gravis.
Website:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~sjjgsca/muscleSlidingFilament.html
http://online.morainevalley.edu/websupported/bio112/muscle,_nervous,_and_reproduction_systems.html
Background:
“Myasthenia gravis is a chronic autoimmune, neuromuscular disease that is known for weakening skeletal muscles, affecting functions such as breathing and moving parts of the body. In skeletal muscle, a rise in intracellular calcium concentration causes the muscles to contract, and a decrease in calcium causes muscles to relax. However, in myasthenia gravis, communication between the nerve and muscle at the neuromuscular junction is disrupted by a transmission error of nerve impulse. Through the use of ordinary differential equations to describe calcium and muscle force in skeletal muscle, which are coupled to end plate potentials at the neuromuscular junction, we model myasthenia gravis and how it affects muscle force generation.”
Reflection towards the project
This was a fun project to do because I really loved to see the application of mathematics in biological, medical, and to our everyday lives. Although not related, as a baby I developed a disease in my bones called Rickets due to Vitamin D deficiency, and studying myasthenia gravis as a type of skeletal muscle disease took me back to what had happened to me, to my bones & skeleton. In the future, it would be a dream of mine to continue this process and come up with mathematical equations to diagnose any other kind of disease in our skeleton.
Skills I built:
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Overleaf for writing reports,
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Research skills
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Planning and organizing
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Presentation skills
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MATLAB
