by Jeff Harrison

Although Yamamoto and classmate Chuck Hoeffer did their share of sight-seeing, the pair came there instead to work. Both had been assigned to study silkworms at Hideaki Maekawa and Kozo Tsuchida's laboratory at the Japan National Institute of Health. Specifically, they were looking for a chemical, common in most insects, that is instrumental in moving lipids, fatty acids to muscles, and in this case the flight muscle tissue of the silkworm moths.

Their three month sabbatical was made possible in part because Maekawa and Tsuchida do collaborative research with Michael A. Wells, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Arizona. The other part of the equation is that Yamamoto and Hoeffer are part of the UA's eight-year-old Undergraduate Biology Research Program, and its two offshoot programs - International UBRP and BRAVO (Biology Research Abroad: Vistas Open).

UBRP places undergraduates in paid positions in research laboratories on campus or at the Arizona Health Sciences Center. The students work alongside professors, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows and sometime publish their original research in professional journals. Yamomoto works for plant sciences professor David W. Galbraith and Hoeffer for Arizona Research Laboratory biologist Michael F. Hammer.

What makes it possible for students to work overseas is the fact that, like Wells, many UA faculty members have strong ties to research and faculty in other countries, says UBRP administrator Carol Bender. "Study and travel abroad as an undergradute are not often considered an important part of a science major's experience. Yet many of today's problems are global. Solutions frequently require scientists of different nationalities working together," Bender says.

A heady experience

For young people not long out of high school, the travel experience can be heady. Says Yamamoto of his trip to Tokyo, "I worked in the Department of Radiation Control and Biology, along with about 10 other people. Communication inside the lab was no problem. Every Thursday night they practiced English by translating sections of the textbook, "Genes and Genomes." Trying to communicate on the street, however, was a different story. "Taking a four week conversational Japanese course helped me communicate at the restaurant and supermarket, but didn't help me strike up a conversation very easily."

Hoeffer, who is from Nogales, said he was astounded by the size of Tokyo and its population, four times that of Arizona's. "The tiny roads were filled with tinier cars that rocketed by at breakneck speeds. Everything was a notch faster there. People devoured their lunches hardly pausing even for a breath. I quickly realized that space and time were valuable commodities for the Japanese. Neither was ever wasted.

"We found ourselves working the long hours of our hosts. It was a fantastic learning experience, teaching me a lot about self reliance and co-operation."

Not all fun and games

Not every assignment is fun and games. BRAVO and International UBRP students have also worked in desperately poor areas. Concepcion "Nina" Roxas, who works in the lab of veterinary sciences department head Charles R. Sterling, recently returned from a stint at the Hospital Cayetano Heredia in Lima, Peru, a trip she calls both "memorable" and "sobering."

Nina's project was studying an intestinal parasite that causes diarrhea, anorexia, and nausea, and can be fatal in rural Peruvians, especially children, many of whom suffer from malnutrition and other ailments.

"Although the majority of my time was in the laboratory, I also spent every Monday in a pediatric oral rehydration unit at the Hospital del Niño doing diagnostic work in the unit's lab, with sporadic visits to the Policlinica Japonesa. At the children's hospital I acted as a quality control for the detection of Cyclospora and Cryptosporidium (another parasite) in patient samples, and was educated on microscopically diagnosing other endemic parasites of the region.

"At the Japanese Clinic I did data collection and witnessed an endoscpopy/biopsy procedure on a Cyclospora-infected individual.

"Tuesdays were reserved for going to Las Pampas, a Lima shanty town which a group visits every day to give treatment, collect samples, and monitor a large study cohort. I shadowed Lilia Cabrera, the head nurse, as she monitored the growth and medical status of the children in the study."

Roxas, Yamamoto, and Hoeffer are only three of 30 UBRPers who have worked in other countries. The first, Anthony Stazzone, convinced Bender and his supervisor, Ron Watson of the UA family and community medicine department, to send him to Cairo, Egypt in 1992 to update researchers there on methods for detecting intestinal parasites. Stazzone, now a UA medical student, spent the 1995 Fall semester in Italy on a research grant from the American Heart Association. He says the experience in Cairo matured him immeasurably.

Bender says getting students overseas can be a juggling act, trying to coordinate hosts, appropriate research posts, and financing.

The programs target students with at least six months of research experience before they are eligible to head overseas. Bender says, once there, UBRPers enrich the labs of their foreign hosts, and bring back with them the perspectives of scientists from sometimes very different backgrounds.

Denise Krawitz, a recent UA graduate and former UBRPer in the laboratory run by Elizabeth Vierling, an associate professor of biochemistry, worked at the Wolfgang Goethe Institut in 1994 for Lutz Nover, one of the most successful scientists from the former East Germany. There she worked on the theoretical and practical aspects of protein folding and the biology of heat shock proteins, which are important in reproduction.

"I worked with absolutely fantastic people. We talked about many topics, but I found our conversations about their lives in East Germany to be the most fascinating, These conversations changed the way I think about other cultures, our culture, and myself. They were a fun group to work with. I had a chance to thank some of them for their generous hospitality by introducing them to margaritas at a Mexican restaurant in the American commisary in Frankfurt." Krawitz is back working at a laboratory in Germany on a Fulbright scholarship.

David Frye was a UBRP undergraduate in the lab of Naomi E. Rance, a UA pathology professor. He arrived at the airport in Florence, Italy, with a description of his host professor. Giancorlo Pepeu, as a short, balding man in his sixties, wearing a green overcoat and grey pants. Frye said, to his dismay, that pretty much described the majority of older Italian men in Florence.

"Needless to say, after meeting nearly ten strangers at the station, Professor Pepeu, a neuropharmacologist and the newly elected president of the Italian Society of Pharmacology, approached me with a firm handshake - symbolizing a mentorship which not only included an appreciation for the scientific method but a better understanding of Western cultural traditions for which Florence is responsible."

Frye, "under the direct supervision and second-hand smoke of Maria Grazia Giovannini," studied acetylcholine release in rats, research directly related to the understanding of Alzheimer's disease. He is now a first-year medical student at Dartmouth.

Carol Bender says of the 18 students who have graduated, seven are in medical school, three work in research laboratories, three are looking for either graduate or medical schools to attend, two are in doctoral programs, two are in M.D./Ph.D programs, and one is a program coordinator for the Biosfety Committee at UCLA.