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Michael Woodbury's Project SummaryFor my REU project, I have worked with my mentor in modeling part of the process of blood clot lysis. Recently, experiments in confocal microscopy have revealed that the structural makeup of the fibrin network that makes up a blood clot determines how lysis proceeds. Primarily, I have mathematically modeled the experiments done by J. W. Weisel et. al., outlined in their paper "Influence of Fibrin Network Conformation and Fibrin Fiber Diameter on Fibrinolysis Speed". In said experiments, microchambers of blood clot of either "tight/thin" or "loose/thick" fibrin networks were loaded from one end with tPA. The experimenters were able to observe the movement of these tPA molecules. TPA molecules activate plasminogen which, in turn, lyses the fibrin. In our research, we have begun to model this system in order to give further insight into the dynamics of the lysis process. Writing code to computationally solve the model and analysis of the computational results have been a large part of the project as well as developing/refining the model to further resemble the results of the Weisel paper. Ultimately, the goal is to develop a reaction-diffusion model that includes the interplay between the various chemicals and accurately describes the process taking place. |
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VIGRE Steering Committee Department of Mathematics University of Utah 155 South 1400 East; Room 233 Salt Lake City, UT 84112 email: viscom@math.utah.edu |
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