Undergraduate Research
During my junior year, I conduct undergraduate research. I received the foundation grant offered through the MNSU Undergraduate Research Center with my partner to conduct our research on Myosin oxidation effect on Magnesium and Actin Binding. Foundation grant is a $1000 stipend money for research students to conduct the research as well as additional grant money to buy necessary materials to conduct the research. In order to receive this grant, we prepared and submitted a proposal on what, why and how we planned to do this research. We analyzed several primary research papers on our research topic from our library databases. We analyzed review articles and primary literature articles. Because our research requires methodology and an actual experiment conducted, we used a primary literature article than a review article. This study aids in our understanding of the effect and the development of strategies to mitigate the influence on muscular contraction. The research took 2-3 month to be presented in the Undergrad Symposium. Following the rule of ethical conduct of research, we used the actin of a rabbit to prepare the samples. Our first trial of data measured was very high than what we expected. This brought challenge in our obtained result as it contradicts our hypothesis. Then we decided to redo the experiment with the suspicion of having experimental errors like that of pipetting. We were able to receive a result somewhat close to our hypothesis and this helped us to research more about the data that we obtained to have a future prediction or follow up experiment for conducting the experiment. After that, we prepared posters that included all the information about the research before presenting it for the URC symposium. The presentation was held over zoom, and we presented it to three judges on what the research was about. We presented between 5-10 minutes with my partner turn by turn. Presenting it in the URC symposium was an honor for me and it has helped me gain confidence in presenting my work in several conferences under my major and submitting my proposals so I can get accepted in my work and achievement. In fact, this research has helped me to gain a great experience on collecting, analyzing and writing a proposal on what our research is about. I have gained a better understanding on tackling primary literatures and obtaining the necessary information. Our professor has guided us in reviewing and editing our research. Hence this majorly contributes to our major in preparing, conducting and presenting particular research. Moreover, in relation to my research topic I have gained a better understanding of my selected topic and I was able to improve my communication, writing and reviewing research paper. In fact, currently I am building on my results from last year and performing several assays to discover new findings and learn more about its effects. I will also be presenting this research on the upcoming undergrad symposium as a follow up research.
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Artifacts
