1. A representation of something, often idealized or modified to make it conceptually easier to understand. 2. Something to be imitated. 3. In dentistry, a cast. 4. A mathematical representation of a particular phenomenon. 5. An animal that is used to mimic a pathologic condition. [It. midello, fr. L. modus, measure, standard]
- additive m. a m. in which the combined effect of several factors is the sum of the effects that would be produced by each of the factors in the absence of the others.
- animal m. study in a population of laboratory animals that uses conditions of animals analogous to conditions of humans to simulate processes comparable to those that occur in human populations.
- Armitage-Doll m. a m. of carcinogenesis with the premise that the main variable determining change in risk is not age but time.
- biomedical m. a conceptual m. of illness that excludes psychological and social factors and includes only biological factors in an attempt to understand a person's medical illness or disorder.
- biopsychosocial m. a conceptual m. that assumes that psychological and social factors must also be included along with the biological in understanding a person's medical illness or disorder.
- cloverleaf m. a m. for the structure of tRNA; so named because the structure roughly resembles a cloverleaf.
- computer m. a mathematical representation of the functioning of a system, presented in the form of a computer program. SYN: computer simulation.
- concerted m. SYN: Monod-Wyman-Changeux m..
- cooperativity m. a m. used to explain the property of cooperativity observed in certain enzymes; E.G., allosterism or hysteresis.
- fluid mosaic m. a m. for the structure of a biomembrane, with lateral diffusibility of constituents and little, if any, flip-flop motion.
- genetic m. a formalized conjecture about the behavior of a heritable structure in which the component terms are intended to have literal interpretation as standard structures of empirical genetics.
- induced fit m. 1. a m. to suggest a mode of action of enzymes in which the substrate binds to the active site of the protein, causing a conformational change in the protein; 2. SYN: Koshland-Némethy-Filmer m..
- Koshland-Némethy-Filmer m. (KNF m.) a m. to explain the allosteric form of cooperativity; in this m., in the absence of ligands, the protein exists in only one conformation; upon binding, the ligand induces a conformational change that may be transmitted to other subunits. SYN: Adair-Koshland-Némethy-Filmer m., induced fit m. (2).
- lock-and-key m. a m. used to suggest the mode of operation of an enzyme in which the substrate fits into the active site of the protein like a key into a lock.
- logistic m. a statistical m.; in epidemiology, a m. of risk as a function of exposure to a risk factor.
- mathematical m. representation of a system, process, or relationship in mathematical form, using equations to simulate the behavior of the system or process under study.
- medical m. a set of assumptions that views behavioral abnormalities in the same framework as physical disease or abnormalities.
- Monod-Wyman-Changeux m. (MWC m.) a m. used to explain the allosteric form of cooperativity; in this m., an oligomeric protein can exist in two conformational states in the absence of the ligand; these states are in equilibrium and the one that is predominant has a lower affinity for the ligand (which binds to the protein in a rapid equilibrium fashion). SYN: concerted m..
- multiplicative m. a m. in which the joint effect of two or more causes is the product of their effects if they were acting alone.
- multistage m. a mathematical m., mainly for carcinogenesis, based on the theory that a specific carcinogen may affect one among a number of stages in the development of cancer.
- MWC m. abbreviation for Monod-Wyman-Changeux m..
- pathologic m. an animal or animal stock that by inheritance or by artificial manipulation develops a disorder similar to some disease of interest and hence directly or by analogy furnishes evidence of its pathogenesis and may be used as a m. for the study of preventive or therapeutic measures.
- Reed-Frost m. mathematical m. of infectious disease transmission and herd immunity. The m. gives the number of new cases of an infection that can be expected in a specified time in a closed, freely mixing population of immune and susceptible individuals, with varying assumptions about frequency of contact.
- Sartwell incubation m. mathematical m. based on empirical observations, showing that incubation periods for communicable diseases have a log-normal distribution; m. holds true for certain kinds of cancers that have well-defined external causes.
- statistical m. a formal representation for a class of processes that allows a means of analyzing results from experimental studies, such as the Poisson m. or the general linear m.; it need not propose a process literally interpretable in the context of the individual case.
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mod·el 'mäd-əl n
1 a) a pattern of something to be made: a cast of a tooth or oral cavity
2) something (as a similar object or a construct) used to help visualize or explore something else (as the living human body) that cannot be directly observed or experimented on see ANIMAL MODEL
3) a system of postulates, data, and inferences presented as a mathematical description of an entity or state of affairs
model vt, mod·eled or mod·elled; mod·el·ing or mod·el·ling 'mäd-liŋ, -əl-iŋ to produce (as by computer) a representation or simulation of
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mod·el (modґəl) 1. something that represents or simulates something else; a replica. 2. a reasonable facsimile of the body or any of its parts; used for demonstration and teaching purposes. 3. cast (def. 5). 4. to imitate another's behavior; see modeling. 4. a hypothesis or theory.Medical dictionary. 2011.