Question: How does a computer model work along with your results?

Gemma Sharp answered on 13 Jun 2011:

Thanks for your question maegz 🙂

This is something a lot of biologists don’t understand because we’re not really taught how to make computer models, so I spend a lot of time explaining this!

Basically, human labour is a really complex, difficult thing to study. We can’t exactly inject healthy mums with random drugs to see if they stop them going into labour too early because the drugs might harm the mum or the baby. So, it’d be really good if we could have a ‘model’ of what happens in the uterus (womb) on a computer, so that we can manipulate the model rather than a real woman.

I’m building the model at the moment, which means I’m entering a list of proteins that I think are important into a special computer program and then telling it how these proteins react with each other and how quickly the reactions happen.

To find out how quickly the reactions happen, and which proteins are most important, I have to carry out lots of experiments in the lab.

I take some uterus cells, add chemicals, and see how the levels of different proteins in the cells change over time. Then I can work out how fast the reactions are happening, and enter the results into my model.

Eventually, when my model is behaving just like the real thing, I’ll be able to see what happens if I take some reactions out or add others. This will give us an idea what sort of drugs might stop women going into labour too early.

Hope that answered your question. Let me know if you want to know anything else!