OU Externship
I observed one of Dr. Amy
Banes-Berceli undergraduate students remove the outliers within the data
points. Before attending I did not
realize how tedious the research process was. I learned the data received must
be analyzed everyday. The data collected for one day had over 6,000 data points
that measured the blood pressure of diabetic and normal rats. The points that
were removed were deleted because; they made the data appear inconsistent and
unrealistic. Each point that is deleted must be justified so that it does not
appear that the data is being skewed. In
the myograph experiment in which hypertension between male and female rats was
compared the data seemed to express that male rats show signs of hypertension
at a much faster rate than female rats.
The rats that were tested had invasive surgery, so catheters could be
placed inside the rats and the saline and angiotensin could be injected. Unfortunately, the catheter was placed to
tightly inside the aortic wall and resulted in poor tracing points. The angiotensin,which
is a substrate that causes hypertension, was injected as well. The sodium had to
be autoclaved for sterility. The controls in the project are rats that did not receive
the angiotensin and the saline but the still receive the invasive procedure.
The data that is received from the
rats is graphed so the rats can be compared. Dr.Banes-Berceli explained to me
that use western blotting to determine which proteins are involved in
expressing hypertension. The blood pressure from the normal rats in compared to
the blood pressure of the diabetic rats. The graphs indicated that diabetic
rats express the proteins involved at a much faster rate than the normal rats.
Dr. Banes-Berceli is trying to determine why those proteins are expressed, in
which she and her team will be able to develop a drug that will be able to prevent
those proteins from turning on and hopefully get the drug on the market.
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