Carlos Lazo spent the year after completing his undergraduate degree as a tutor for sea slugs in David Glanzman's UCLA learning and memory laboratory. "In science, what you try to do is answer complicated questions using very simple systems," Carlos says. "A sea slug is great because it has fewer neurons."

Sea slugs breathe by extending a siphon that pulls in water and extracts its oxygen. "Whenever they feel something brushing against it, they typically bring it back to their body," sensing danger, Carlos says. "We can train them not to react to touch" by using the same kind of touch repeatedly with no ensuing danger, or to respond faster by repeatedly following a touch with a prod of some kind. "In one case, they ignore it because it's not very important, and nothing bad is going to happen," he says, "or in the other, they pull the siphon in fast because something else is coming soon."

Teaching sea slugs was a learning experience for Carlos, who had decided fairly late in his undergraduate career that he wanted to pursue doctoral studies in neurobiology. One of his courses covered neurodegenerative diseases, and "when I saw the type of work that was being presented," he says, "I talked to Professor Nancy Wolf after class and found out that I could have a career studying something that interesting." Concerned that he might need more benchwork experience, he spent the following year with Dr. Glanzman, "learning what graduate life is like."

He already knew what he wanted to study: Parkinson's Disease. As an undergraduate, Carlos participated in a research project that analyzed MRIs of Parkinson's patients to see if there was a common area where electrodes could be placed to alleviate the tremors associated with the disease. This is a treatment sometimes used when medications are no longer able to adequately replenish significant chemicals in the brain.

This fall, Carlos hopes to complete his doctorate, with a dissertation looking at the mechanisms underlying brain damage in Parkinson's Disease. Using transgenic mice--manipulated to remove a specific gene--he exposes the animal to the commonly used herbicide, paraquat, and to a drug called reserpine, which blocks dopamine release (dopamine decreases in human Parkinson's patients). Earlier research has shown that the incidence of Parkinson's is higher in agricultural areas where herbicides are used. Carlos's work focuses on the gene DJ-1, which is absent or altered in some people with a family history of Parkinson's Disease.

The UCLA Center for the Study of Parkinson's Disease, headed by Carlos's adviser, Marie-Francoise Chesselet, conducts primary basic research with the goal of finding treatments that could stop or reverse the course of the disease. "We know which cells are being lost in the disease," Carlos says, "but we don't know why." Autopsies show that people with Parkinson's have far fewer dopaminergic cells in the brain's substantia nigra, which leads to the development of tremor. "Do they have fewer cells because something else in the brain is clearing them away, or do they have fewer because the cells are dying off on their own, and if that's the case, what's causing them to die in some people and not in others?" These are the research questions Carlos is helping to address.

One inspiration is his grandfather who is almost 100 years old. "What does he have," Carlos wonders, "that allowed him to live to this age and not suffer from any neurodegenerative disorders?" But mostly, his research is its own reward. "For me, my incentive was just the fascination--where we know what area of the brain has a problem, but we can't fix it," he says. "That intrigued me, and I wanted to help."

Helping is also the goal of Carlos's outreach efforts. Early in his career at UCLA, he became involved in STEM-PLEDGE, a Graduate Division-sponsored program to recruit more underrepresented minorities to doctoral studies, particularly in science, engineering, and math. "When you're in high school, and you excel in science and math, you're not told that graduate school is a possibility. It's more--medical school, that's what you should do," Carlos says. "That's what I experienced."

Published in Fall 2010, Graduate Quarterly