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December 13, 1999
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Grant after grant kept slipping by Quinn Vega because he just couldn't get his proposal in before the deadlines. He's not a procrastinator. Vega was kicking around some good ideas and he wrote the proposal, but never felt it was ready to send out. "My ideas weren't pure research and they weren't pure teaching," he said. "They were a mixture. I had the research part mapped out, but I wasn't sure how to write the teaching part." Then Susan Nanney of Research and Sponsored Programs told him about the National Science Foundation (NFS) CAREER Program, which incorporates critical aspects of basic scientific research while training undergraduates in molecular biology as they participate in the research design and analysis. Vega knew he had found a match. So he refined his proposal and met the deadline. He received $105,000 a year for the next four years from the NSF to fund his project, "Analysis of RET Co-receptor Function/Teaching Lab Setting."
INSIGHT: What makes this particular grant a perfect match for your project?
Vega: The idea of this grant is to fund young faculty so we can conduct interesting research and provide good teaching opportunities for our students. It's allowing me to work on a research project within the context of a teaching laboratory. Students are learning the techniques of molecular biology, but they're also learning why and how we design experiments.
INSIGHT: Tell us about the research aspect of the grant.
Vega: There's a certain receptor [a specialized cell or group of nerve endings that responds to sensory stimuli] that, when overactive in rats, causes three different types of cancer. When it's inactive, the rats don't grow kidneys and certain nerves don't migrate to the right place. So it's an important receptor and we want to know more about how it is activated outside the cell.
We know there's a ligand [a molecule] that binds to the receptor and activates it. But that's not the whole story, because there are three co-receptors and a fourth recently was discovered. We want to find the co-receptor that is mostly involved with binding this ligand. The idea is to mix and match bits and pieces until we find out exactly where the ligand interacts with the co-receptor to activate the receptor.
INSIGHT: Why is training students in research important?
Vega: When I was an undergraduate at the University of California, Irvine, I didn't like my laboratories. They were "canned." We knew the results of the experiments beforehand and there was no connection between them. My training didn't prepare me for graduate school or industry where we have no idea what's going to come from our research.
Students in a canned lab know what to do, but after an experiment is complete it flies right out of their heads because they'll never do it again. They may understand the data but they don't care about it because they're aware that it's not an actual experiment since they already know the answer. In real research, there's always a connection, and we don't conduct random experiments, we do them in order.
INSIGHT: How have you remedied that?
Vega: I figured, why not teach molecular biology techniques in an interesting setting? Give them a real problem that they would find in graduate school or in industry. I've designed experiments for them in an order that is understandable and I've built in some safeguards: four different groups doing the same types of experiments, so if one group fails at some point, it can get a reagent from another. In real research we have to stop until it works, then go to the next step. We only have 14 weeks, so that's not practical. But, within the semester setting, I want to make it as realistic as possible.
INSIGHT: What are the advantages of teaching here rather than at a larger institution?
Vega: When I was an undergraduate I took classes with 350 other students in the room, so I was a face in the crowd. My professors had no idea who I was-even if I took their classes three times. Here a student can ask me to write a letter of recommendation and, not only can I say yes, I can say something personal. That, I think, is the strength of this university.