When Vinay Bhaskar arrived at UCLA for graduate studies in biochemistry, he planned to avoid two things: transcription factors, which are proteins that turn genes on and off, and Drosophila, or fruit flies, a model organism whose genes governing cell growth are similar to human genes

Vinay got off to a good start. One of his first laboratory rotations was with Principal Investigator (PI) Steven G. Clarke, whose studies of protein modification use three or four different organisms--none of them having wings. Vinay was all set to join Clarke's lab, once his year of rotations was completed.

Then, he found himself doing a rotation in Albert J. Courey's laboratory, where he worked with Scott Valentine, a senior graduate student who became his mentor and then his friend. Before he left UCLA, Scott had passed his laboratory research onto Vinay: the study of a transcription factor called Dorsal in fruit flies. "The project was too good to pass up," Vinay says, even though it trashed his initial plans. He quickly saw that the research "could have some real impact on science in general."

As it turned out, Vinay took Scott's research--looking for proteins that interacted with Dorsal--in a promising new direction. As he was doing a test that looked for interacting proteins, Vinay says he "stumbled on" the presence of a modification system called Smt3 conjugation, which "appears to stabilize proteins so they aren't rapidly degraded within the cell." Smt3 conjugation, present in a range of proteins, had been getting considerable scientific attention.

Vinay began his new study by observing the conjugation and mapping the exact place in the Dorsal protein where it occurs. Then, he decided to create a mutation at that spot, so the conjugation could not take place. The mutated dorsal "became a far better transcription factor," Vinay says. "It was a lot more active." Now, he is looking into why this is so

Vinay's findings could have implications far beyond the world of fruit flies. Dorsal in fruit flies is related to the protein NfkappaB in human beings and other mammals, a protein that has a central role in modulating the immune response. So, for example, the conjugation that extends Dorsal's presence in cells might also help sustain human immune systems under attack.

Some of Vinay's findings have already been published. "Vin has had to show tremendous initiative and intellectual independence in carrying out his work," says Professor Courey. "In the process, he has opened up an entire new avenue of investigation for my laboratory, and one that is the subject of a new National Institutes of Health grant proposal."

In Professor Courey, Vinay was happy to find a mentor who isn't "looking over your shoulder all the time" but who nevertheless is interested in projects and available to help. "It surprises me now much he remembers about the details of my experiments and ways to solve problems I might confront," Vinay says. A particular virtue of his PI is that "if he doesn't have an answer for you, he'll become interested in solving that problem and work just as hard as I would to find an answer."

One evening, Vinay was studying a new line or family of flies, trying to see what physical marker distinguished them, so that they could be identified later. Puzzled by what he saw--or more accurately, didn't see (the marker)--Vinay asked Professor Courey to have a look. Both of them had a hunch that the marker involved a tiny appendage called the haltier, between the wing and legs, which seemed to be larger than normal. But it was Professor Courey who "kept looking through the literature and found something that confirmed my guess and put it on my desk on his way out," Vinay says.

Besides working in Professor Courey's lab, Vinay has assisted his PI in a plum job as a teaching assistant. This will be the third year he's accompanied Professor Courey to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, a prominent research institute on Long Island, New York, where he helps Professor Courey teach 16 professional researchers from around the world about protein purification and characterization. Professor Courey says "Vin puts a lot of energy" into what he calls "a kind of 2-week Protein Camp," where students spend more than 12 hours a day in the lab. According to Vinay, "If anybody has the energy at the end of the day," they head for a pub/pool hall on the institute's grounds. "A lot of times, it's just me and Al and maybe one other person."

Rubbing shoulders with professional colleagues is good preparation for Vinay's eventual goal returning to work in biotechnology research in private industry. He has just completed a 3-year National Institutes of Health fellowship that should also help him land a good job.

But first, he has a dissertation to complete and a successor to train. Vinay has started working with Matt Smith, a second-year graduate student who has become his protege, as he was once Scott Valentine's. Although his eventual destination is private industry, Vinay is weighing the possibility of a postdoctoral fellowship "learning something totally different," he says--nothing to do with transcription factors or fruit flies.

Published in Fall 2000, Graduate Quarterly