Undergrad's digital model of amoeba helps scientists study h...( in a lab. Kim whose studies include...)

Kim, whose studies included a concentration in electrical and computer engineering, developed her model by pursuing a research opportunity offered last year by Pablo Iglesias, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Iglesias and Andre Levchenko, a postdoctoral fellow at Cal Tech, had already created a pioneering one-dimensional model of Dictyostelium. Iglesias sought a student to expand upon this research by devising a more detailed two-dimensional version, using new software called Virtual Cell. "I just jumped at the opportunity," Kim said. She learned how to use the challenging software during an internship last summer at the University of Connecticut Health Center, then returned to Johns Hopkins to work on the project.

Building on the mathematical foundation created by Iglesias and Levchenko, Kim created a two-dimensional model that replicates the chemotaxis process in Dictyostelium. The model, being tested in a lab set up by Peter Devreotes, a professor in the medical school's Department of Biological Chemistry, is designed to save time and money by steering biologists toward the experiments that are most likely to yield useful results. "Although it's still in the developmental phase, Jane's computer model is already beginning to mimic the biological response we see in the cell during chemotaxis," Janetopoulos said. "It is unlikely that it can mirror what we see in the living cell precisely, but one of our goals is to watch the virtual cell respond to a chemical gradient. Then, on the computer, we change the way the components are interacting or add new ones and see what happens. This type of experimentation can help us direct our efforts toward finding certain proteins and analyzing certain pathways more aggressively."

In developing the model, Kim said training her engineering sk
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Contact: Phil Sneiderman
prs@jhu.edu
410-516-7160
Johns Hopkins University
25-May-2001