Arjun Ramachandran is a senior Biology major with a Neuroscience concentration at St. Olaf College where he studies head direction cells and neural mechanisms for spatial navigation with Dr. Gary Muir. The Muir lab is interested in developing an affordable, open-source microdrive array for chronic in vivo recordings of head direction cells. At UCLA, Arjun works in Dr. Felix Schweizer’s lab in the Department of Neurobiology studying environmental factors responsible for increasing the risk of developing Parkinson’s Disease. In particular, the Schweizer lab is studying ziram - an agricultural pesticide - which modulates synaptic transmission by directly inhibiting E1 Ligase, the first enzyme in the ubiquitin signaling system (USS). The USS plays a crucial role in modulating synaptic transmission through post-translational modifications (PTMs) of pre-synaptic proteins. Specifically, vesicle associated membrane protein (VAMP2) - a SNARE protein that mediates vesicle fusion with the plasma membrane - is of interest: two of its lysine-residues are ubiquitinated and the PTMs are disrupted by ziram. We are now testing the role of ziram on synaptic transmission by substituting the wild-type VAMP2 with a mutant version of VAMP2 where the two crucial lysine residues have been replaced with arginine residues. We hypothesize that neurons with the mutant VAMP2 will be less sensitive to the action of ziram than the wild-type VAMP2 will be. Arjun would like to thank the Amgen Scholars Program for the opportunity and the Schwiezer lab for its guidance.