Many of the kids in the Southeast Los Angeles inner-city neighborhood where Cory Evans grew up only had rare opportunities to go places like the beach. Thanks to a commercial fisherman who was a family friend, Cory had the chance to go to sea. "When you're a kid and you get to see sharks and other giant fish, it's quite fascinating," he says. "There was always something interesting to see or do. Going down to the harbor and working on the BRIGHT STAR (a commercial fishing boat) was a lot of fun. The ocean's immense diversity of life and the hands-on work was very satisfying and provided so many unique opportunities." The ocean fed his growing interest in biology, and the BRIGHT STAR provided a means to explore how things worked.

Science and mathematics quickly became Cory's main interests, which he pursued while attending South Gate High School. This pursuit wasn't always easy in the face of limited resources. For example, Cory relates that students "couldn't take advanced placement physics because the instructor left to teach at a magnet school. There wasn't anybody else to teach it." Cory says that education is "a matter of perspective. I did well by South Gate standards, and that helped to provide me with the opportunity to go somewhere else."

With fond memories, Cory also points out that South Gate High had several excellent teachers and a college counselor who worked hard for honors students like Cory, "to push us on that road and give us the exposure we needed." No less important, he says was "my loving family and great friends who made getting through everyday life there a lot easier."

With that help, Cory became an undergraduate at UCLA, deciding to explore the field of molecular biology, a program that had become the Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology by the time he graduated in 1997. The adjustment to college wasn't exactly smooth sailing. The social and educational environments he encountered at UCLA were completely different from what he was used to.

Cory commuted between South Gate and UCLA for five years, with each day serving as a window into two different worlds. According to Cory "South Gate has sort of a small-town mentality, and it's easy to get caught up in it without realizing that there's a world of experiences outside of South Gate."

As a graduate student at UCLA, Cory was finally able to live on his own, using income he earned as a research or teaching assistant to pay his way. He joined the molecular immunology lab run by Associate Professor Renato J. Aguilera. "I liked the environment, I liked the people who worked there," he says, and the subject was intriguing. "I wanted to know how life works on a miniature scale. You have all of these cartoons in your head about how things interact. This work makes it possible to understand what's going on even when you can't actually see it."

Cory's first project was to examine the relationship between DNase II, an enzyme produced by mammals, including humans, and NUC-1, an enzyme found in the simple roundworm C. elegans. He has found that these enzymes are highly related and appear to function in much the same way. Specifically, all cells have "compartments that are used to degrade or remove waste materials," Cory says. DNase II is found in these compartments where it works to degrade DNA, a job that seems to be particularly important when cells die. According to Cory, "When a cell dies, it usually gets engulfed by another cell, at which time enzymes, including DNase II, work to remove the dead cell, a large fraction of which is DNA." In C. elegans, the loss of this enzymatic activity causes the DNA of the dead cells to accumulate within the engulfing cells. This extra DNA doesn't appear to be detrimental to the overall health of C. elegans, which may be due to the fact that it is a relatively simple creature of only 959 cells. However, in more complex organisms-such as mice and humans-Professor Aguilera's lab team suspects that, among other things, the accumulation of waste DNA may be a contributing factor to autoimmune disorders like Systemic Lupus Erythematosis (SLE or Lupus), where DNA is a target of improper immune responses.

Cory's current project is to see what happens in Drosophila (fruit flies) when the same enzyme is defective.

The results of his C. elegans and fruit fly research will comprise his dissertation, and he has been awarded a Dissertation Year Fellowship allowing him to devote full time to research and writing. Whether or not such research will lead to a cure for diseases is a question Cory can't answer. He points out that "Disease genes have normal cellular functions, and so many times it's not possible to devise effective therapeutics until we have a good understanding about how these genes work."

Cory "is very good at determining what experiments are worth doing and which ones are not," says his adviser, Renato Aguilera. "He thinks long and hard about the correct approach to a problem and is not shy about asking experts their opinions. This ability is one of the most important tools that PhD students must master before graduation."

Looking ahead, Cory plans to do postdoctoral study. "It is important to decide what you want to do and who you would like to work with, and then you try to go wherever that person is," Cory says.

As for his "global goal," he says, "I think it would be nice to have my own lab, and I love teaching molecular biology."

His department requires all graduate students to spend two quarters as teaching assistants (TAs). Cory has taught for five quarters and spent two more as the TA consultant for his department, organizing a course for new graduate student TAs. He has also mentored undergraduates as part of the University's Student Research Program as well as the Minority Access Research Center, which Professor Aguilera directs.

Although Cory took the extra TA work because he needed the financial support, he's also found the job rewarding. Teaching "reinforces what you learned earlier," he says. "Having more education about a topic gives you a new perspective when you revisit the basics again. By choosing to teach a different course each time, he says, "I always learn at the same time I'm teaching."

Published in Fall 2001, Graduate Quarterly