Graduate researcher Desiree Villarreal
UTSA graduate researcher published in international science magazine
(June 4, 2002)--As the single mother of an eight-year-old boy, Corpus Christi
native Desiree Villarreal has been accepting challenges all of her
life.
After graduating high school, Villarreal accepted an appointment to the U.S.
Naval Academy, however, vision problems prevented her from continuing with
her military career.
Fresh out of the academy, she moved to San Antonio where she completed her
bachelor's degree in chemistry and biochemistry from St. Mary's University
and her master's degree in biology from the University of Texas at San Antonio.
After completing her studies, Villarreal first joined the Southwest Research
Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio, and then NASA at Kennedy
Space Center in Florida. There, she worked with international undergraduate
students, showing them the biomedical research going on and the rigors that
astronauts have to endure. She also assisted in post-flight physicals of the
astronauts following six landing missions.
Grant-funding problems ended the position, and Villarreal moved to Dallas
to take a position at the University Of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
where she found herself taking directions from colleagues almost half her
age, with no practical lab experience and with their Ph.D.s, which did not
sit well with her.
So, she decided to do something about it and applied to UTSA's specialized
neuroscience research program, where she was accepted and started working
on her Ph.D. Villarreal eventually serving as a student and graduate assistant
under UTSA biology researcher Brian Derrick. But brain research was
something new to her--all of her previous experience was cardiovascular/renal
physiology, which involved work with the kidneys and their effect on blood
pressure.
"I have found that all the rules of logic and physiology apply, no matter
where you are in the body," said Villarreal. "If you don't use it,
you will lose it."
For the past 18 months, Derrick and Villarreal have studied rats to determine
if memory is retained after receptor inhibitors are introduced into the equation.
Rats were run through a maze until they could remember how to find their food
reward. Then some of the rats were introduced to a drug called CPP, which
blocks the receptors in the brain and thus prevents new learning from taking
place. Six days later, all the rats were tested again to see if they could
remember how to find the food. The rats that were given the drug were able
to remember where the food in the maze was located more accurately than the
mice that did not receive the injections.
The researchers concluded that the original 20th-century findings were correct
in that new learning erases old learning, and previous memories disappear
through a passive "disuse" of memory. Their findings on memory retention
were recently published in the January edition of Nature Neuroscience magazine.
To be published in a national magazine is an honor, but to do so as a graduate
student is a greater honor, according to Villarreal.
Villarreal attributes her success to her mother, who went back to earn her
degree after a 20-year absence from school.
"My mother always said put your future in your mind, and nobody can take
that from you. She has a saying hanging in her dining room that says, 'If
you educate a man, you educate a person, but if you educate a woman, then
you educate a family,'" she added.
The brain research is part of a $1.2 million National Institutes of Health
(NIH) grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute
on Neurological Disorders and Strokes.
UTSA is ranked second in the state in the amount of biology research funding
it receives from NIH. In fiscal year 2000, UTSA received a total of $5.19
million, with $5.05 million going to 12 research grants and $146,000 toward
training programs. Nationally, UTSA is ranked No. 22 in research funding for
biology out of 487 institutions of higher learning in the United States.
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© The University of Texas at San Antonio, 2002