Download Dr. Luis P. Villarreal – Virologist

Middle School Level
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Dr. Luis P. Villarreal – Virologist
My name is Luis Perez Villarreal. I was born in East Los Angeles. My
mother's side of the family has been in the L.A. area for many generations.
During the depression years, my mother briefly left southern California for
northern Mexico. That's where she met my father. I also have three older
brothers. I grew up mainly in Los Angeles, spending one year in Arizona, in
the cities of Phoenix and Nogales.
I started elementary school when I lived in East L.A. At the time, my father
was buying old houses, fixing them up, then re-selling them for profit, so I
ended up meandering into the San Gabriel Valley from East L.A., going to
eleven grammar schools in the process. I also went to three junior high
schools and five high schools. My childhood friends were forever changing
and my environment was always in flux. This type of lifestyle can make one very adaptable. My favorite
subject in school was science, and I also enjoyed reading on my own.
My job as a scientist now at University of California, Irvine (www.uci.edu) is to explore different kinds of
problems with viruses. My career goals are to continue with my research with respect to how viruses are
involved with their hosts, contribute to their hosts, how they affect their hosts, as well as how these
processes are used by the hosts themselves. Now, you are probably thinking, "Say what?!"
Okay, I'll explain to you what is so fascinating about my work.
I became very interested in chemistry because it describes living things in terms of mechanics. In the
1930's, Wendell Stanley first showed the virus as a crystal. Up until then it was thought that living things
and material things, such as crystals, were completely different. What Stanley showed is that living things,
the people, plants and animals around us, are made up of chemicals. This illustrated the similarities
between the living and physical worlds.
I was among the first scientists to "program" a living thing using the polyoma virus. You can think about
it like this: Part of a virus codes for proteins, and the rest of it acts as the operating system for how the
virus should be programmed to function. What we showed is that we could redesign the instructions of the
virus so that it would go to other parts of the body and reproduce itself there. Gene therapy is one use.
Gene therapy is the use of genetic information that can be used in medicine to cure people. Many of the
most widespread diseases are caused by damaged genes. For example if you are a hemophiliac and your
blood does not clot if you get a cut, the doctor may be able to cure that disease by reprogramming the
genes. Most diseases can be greatly affected by changing the pattern of gene expression. Heart disease,
brain tumors, cancer and HIV all could potentially be cured using gene therapy strategies.
A virus usually attaches itself to what we call a host and sometimes it can help contribute to the livelihood
of its host by changing its environment and showing it how to evolve. The best way to explain this is to
describe the reproductive habits of a certain kind of wasp. This wasp is a solitary wasp called a Parasitoid.
This wasp paralyzes a caterpillar and lays its eggs inside of it. The caterpillar has an immune system
which would kill the eggs, except that the wasp covers the eggs with a virus which suppresses the
caterpillar's immune system. This kind of virus is only found on the eggs of this wasp, and nowhere else. I
have a hunch this happens more often than we think. This is one problem I am working on--whether or not
this happens with other animal species as well.
Copyright © 2002 SACNAS
www.sacnas.org
Dr. Jose Lima – Microbiologist
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It is very important that women, men and people of many different ethnicities be involved in research,
because the kinds of scientific questions one asks have a lot to do with who they are and where they come
from. It is possible that you could make a great discovery some day. People from different cultural
backgrounds have much to contribute to scientific research.
Copyright © 2002 SACNAS
www.sacnas.org