In the Spotlight—Established Researcher

Natalia Pabón Mora is a Fulbright visiting scholar at the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology of Harvard University. She was a Dresden Junior Fellow at the Technische Universität Dresden in 2019 and was the recipient of a 2018 James R. Jewett Prize in Plant Science (Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University) and of a 2015 Early Career Research Award from the Pan-American Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology.

Website: https://www.evodevoplantas.com

Google scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?%26user=P4P2XugAAAAJ

With whom and where did you study?

I studied Biology at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá, Colombia, under the supervision of Favio González. Then I moved to NYC where I completed my MPhil in Biology and my PhD in the joint program between the City University of New York (CUNY) and the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). My main advisor was Amy Litt (now at UC Riverside) and I had an excellent accompanying committee as my mentors, including Barbara Ambrose (NYBG), Elena Kramer (Harvard University), and Dennis Stevenson (NYBG).

What got you interested in biology? When did you know evodevo was for you?

Growing up in Colombia, one of the biodiversity hotspots worldwide, and having had a childhood surrounded by nature, I was exposed very early on to horticulture and sustainable farming of tropical ornamental flowers and native crops. During my undergraduate studies, I became interested in plant diversity, ontogeny, and evolution, and was exposed to the quite novel intellectual underpinnings of evolution and development. In college, I took a variety of courses in plant systematics, fern taxonomy, plant genetics, and molecular genetics to explore these different, yet convergent disciplines available to study plants.

I became fully and genuinely convinced that plant EvoDevo was for me when I attended a Colombian Botanical Conference where Dr Amy Litt was speaking on floral genetics and the ABC model of floral development in the model species Arabidopsis thaliana (Thale cress), and on the potential of emerging methods to assess gene function in non-model plants. I realized then that EvoDevo was the perfect research program to combine my preferred passions, comparative floral morphology and development, and the genetic bases underlying phenotypic changes. After such a turning point, I have dedicated my entire professional career to study plant EvoDevo focusing on (mostly tropical) non-model taxa.

Which achievement are you most proud of?

I started the first plant EvoDevo lab in Colombia back in 2012 at the Universidad de Antioquia. My experience was unique as there were no similar labs in Latin America at that time. When I started my lab, I was responsible for securing funding to adapt the infrastructure, get the minimal equipment, and recruit undergraduate and graduate students interested in studying plant EvoDevo. My approach was to focus on research and teaching simultaneously, encouraging undergraduate students to dive into EvoDevo questions early in their careers and address these questions in greater depth during graduate school. I started the first syllabus on Developmental Biology at the Universidad de Antioquia. Currently, it is one of the core courses for our undergrad program in Biology, which has given me the opportunity to teach general concepts to first-year students and to enroll them early on for their dissertations.

The biggest challenge to establish myself as a teacher and researcher has been funding. Financial sources for the research I am doing are limited to an institution whose primary goal is teaching. Despite the fact that developing countries, such as Colombia, do not usually have startup money and have fewer governmental funding agencies when compared to developed countries, I am especially proud to have secured several national and international funding sources to carry out first-level research projects during the last 10 years. In that sense, I am grateful to international scientific societies that offer research grants and collaborative programs for faculty members and students worldwide, and to local and international colleagues with whom I have established a solid and successful research group.

Currently, we have learned how to optimize our limited but very efficient facilities, and how to use Colombia's plant diversity as our primary living laboratory. In addition, I have accomplished the training of 19 undergraduate students and 7 graduate students. Altogether, this is the first generation of graduate students in plant EvoDevo, who are eager to continue their research in Colombia committing to advance our knowledge of local biodiversity. My hope is that the science funding policies of the Colombian government and academic institutions stay railed and begin to grow in a way that our early-career scientists can continue their academic activities in their home country.

What was the biggest challenge in getting to your position?

My position was advertised as “Developmental Biology”. Thus, one of the main challenges was to explain to the selection committee that there were novel experimental approaches already in use to address research questions on the mechanisms underlying developmental processes in non-model, tropical plants at both structural and molecular levels. It was equally challenging to place plant EvoDevo at comparable scientific, technical, and conceptual levels as those reached by the dominant developmental biology in the animal kingdom. My colleagues and students have embraced the Plant EvoDevo research program interacting constantly with peers interested in plant molecular evolution, genetics, and development. There is always a fear of spreading too thin when so many plants and systems appear interesting, but I continue to encourage students to not limit themselves or their questions to standardized model systems. I am convinced that tropical, non-model plants offer us a plethora of extremely interesting yet challenging research questions waiting to be answered. So far, we have been able to tackle key questions in flowering networks, floral organ identity and elaboration, and fruit development in a broad sampling of vascular plants, as well as in structural elaboration and genomic content in parasitic plants, and we hope to continue to expand as more students engage in EvoDevo questions.

What do you see as the future of evodevo? Do you have advice for junior evodevo researchers?

I am fully convinced that EvoDevo is a unique discipline as it encompasses different perspectives to tackle a single question: How evolution and development are intertwined to yield such diversity of life forms, genomes, and phenotypes. Thus, I believe the future of the discipline is in the hands of those interested to understand how these pivotal processes interact with each other in natural systems and inspiring question that has intrigued biologists and science philosophers since pre-Darwinian times. My advice to young researchers interested in plant EvoDevo is: to move out of the comfort zone of model systems and take over the challenge of understanding diversity at both structural and molecular levels, development and evolution in extreme ecosystems, environmentally controlled developmental mechanisms, symbiosis, parasitism, and other complex biological interactions. It is a time-consuming task but a rewarding one as one will find out that their research will pave the way for better approaches to better understand nature as it is with its intricacies and oddities.

Why is it important to support and promote evodevo research in Latin America?

Latin America is the home of a large number of biodiversity hotspots, including some of the most exceptional organisms on Earth. In turn, EvoDevo research targeting ecological natural variation in emblematic places like the Andes or the Amazon basin naturally brings an infinite source of unique organisms and questions into the spotlight. The Latin American fauna and flora have inspired and captivated naturalists from the 19th and 20th centuries, including Charles Darwin, A. von Humboldt, Fritz Müller, Florentino Ameghino, and Léon Croizat. Some of these researchers have made significant contributions to the integration of development and evolutionary thinking (Marcellini et al., 2017).

Today, our biological diversity is facing more threats than ever, due to agricultural expansion, climate change, deforestation, and increasing contamination. As scientists, we are committed to carefully follow-up such factors as we can generate and access real-time data on the health, reproductive processes, and developmental landmarks as they change over time. Specifically, in developmental plant biology, numerous aspects of survival and adaptation require urgent study and monitoring, including: (1) shifts in flowering seasons in different altitudinal gradients as climate change progresses over time, (2) spreading of plant–parasitic invasions, (3) production of flowers and fruits in native species under current pollinator populations decline, and (4) phenotypic changes in epidermal features and color in all plant organs in response to increased UV exposure. Therefore, it is key to implement ways to protect and study biodiversity and to support local research in Latin America as the home of 10% of the world's biodiversity.