Biology Honors Alumnus Gained Research Experience With Practical Implications
When Yogin Patel came to UNC Charlotte as an undergraduate biology honors student, he arrived with a mission – to work in a lab with practical implications for its research. Patel, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology with honors in December of 2012, says he found that in the lab of Shan Yan, assistant professor in the Department of Biology.
Patel and other students in the Yan lab uncovered a previously unknown surveillance mechanism used by cells to monitor DNA that is oxidatively damaged. In an unusual opportunity for an undergraduate student, Patel was first author with graduate student Jeremy Willis on a paper in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Another undergraduate honors student, Barry L. Lentz, joined fellow students and Yan on the paper. The researchers hope their work will open new options in drug development some day.
Patel also was first author on a paper in the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) about preparation of Xenopus laevis egg extract.
In high school, as Patel studied advanced levels of biology, he had developed a keen interest in research. Biotechnology and molecular biology courses opened his eyes to activity at the molecular level. He realized he needed access to a lab and other researchers to pursue his passion.
“I was really excited,” he says. “I wanted to do this myself and apply my ideas. But it is not something you just can go do. Meanwhile my father had colon cancer, and I was in the hospital with him.”
As he observed the oncologists working with his father and continued his independent reading, his enthusiasm for research in genomic instability grew. “I really wanted to become productive,” he says. “I really wanted to get my hands on research.”
Three months after joining Yan’s lab, Patel earned second place in the biology division in the Undergraduate Research Conference and later presented his research at the State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research and Creativity Symposium at Duke University. He and other students also visited local high schools and hosted students at UNC Charlotte to showcase the scientific method.
After graduation from UNC Charlotte in December 2012, Patel worked at the Levine Cancer Institute Cancer Pharmacology Department as a clinical lab assistant. He joined the lab of Hexin Chen at the University of South Carolina as a Ph.D. student in October 2013, starting research on cancer stem cell approaches for breast cancer.