Voice over
Welcome to Más allá de los muros del laboratorio, a podcast from the Salk Institute. Join hosts Isabella Davis and Nicole Mlynaryk on a journey behind the scenes of the renowned research institute in San Diego, California. We’re taking you inside the lab to hear the latest discoveries in cutting edge neuroscience, plant biology, cancer, aging, and more. Explore the fascinating world of science while hearing the stories of the brilliant minds behind it.

Here at Salk, we’re unlocking the secrets of life itself and sharing them beyond lab walls.

Isabella
Today, we welcome Natanella Illouz-Eliaz. A plant biologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Salk Institute. Welcome to the podcast, Natanella. So happy to be sitting down with you. Let’s start with your story from the beginning.

Natanella
Okay, so I grew up in a small town in the north western part of Israel, right on the Lebanese border. And I was educated in a kibbutz and a childhood in a kibbutz, I think is a wonderful thing because a kibbutz is a sort of a communal way of living. You have many shared facilities, like a dining room and a laundry, and it’s organized in a way that you have road around the kibbutz, and inside you have tons of grass and small paths.

So, children can pretty freely walk around, go from place to place and from one to another. So kind of very independent way of growing up, which I really, really enjoyed relatively close to nature.

Isabella
Did that independence and proximity to the nature draw you to science at a young age?

Natanella
In high school I also was a part of I went to school basically with the kibbutz I was raised in, although I didn’t live there, and I majored in filmmaking and communications. Yeah. And so science was actually never in my radar or, you know, my intention. Nobody in my family, nobody I knew really was a scientist.

Isabella
Speaking of your family, were your parents both from Israel originally?

Natanella
So, no, actually, my dad is—his parents are from Moroccan descent and my mom is American, she was born and raised in Iowa and in her twenties she moved to Israel. Basically, she was Jewish, she still is Jewish, and she made Aliyah, so she moved on her own to Israel. All her family stayed here. So from the time I was born, I came to visit her family in the States every year until I joined the Army.

Isabella
And did your time in the Army shift your focus away from filmmaking and communications?

Natanella
I ended up doing five years of service in the Israeli army. Mandatory for women is two years. And I at a certain point, I became an officer. I started as a commander in basic trainings, and then I was a commander of commanders for basic training. So I taught soldiers how to become commander and teach all these basic training professions.

And later on, I was in training development. And so we took programs and developed how we teach something in a efficient and good way. So I just thought it was very interesting and I really enjoyed my time in the Army but at some point I knew it’s not how I want to live my life, it’s not what I want to do.

Isabella
And wow, so what next?

Natanella
I was very focused on my next steps, which were take a year off, which is very common for Israelis leaving the army. But then I wanted to go to the university and study business management in order to become a organizational consultant. So I had this very specific path which was somewhat connected to what I did in the Army—training development—but nothing yet related to science.

But that gap year after leaving the Army, what I really wanted to do is to work in agriculture for a year. You know, for those five years I haven’t been home every weekend, in the weekdays I would be in the base, and I would come home maybe a weekend every two weeks. So it’s very intense. You work, you work a lot of hours.

And so I wanted this year of working in a field in agriculture, switching the brain off and really working physically hard. And I ended up doing that in the laboratory of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, in the faculty of Agriculture, where I ended up doing all my degrees later on.

Isabella
What were they studying?

Natanella
They were working on tomato genetics. They were asking questions about heterosis, which is hybrid vigor, which I think is super interesting. Basically, how are we better than our parents? They were asking that about the tomatoes, of course, trying to create better tomatoes, high yielding tomatoes or drought tolerant tomatoes or whatever features they wanted to improve. I got really, really interested in that field of plant genetics I never knew existed before.

So that was kind of the beginning of me getting into that space.

Isabella
So you accidentally stumble into this group of geneticists and keep asking questions, and then you and they both realize together that you really care about this research.

Natanella
Exactly, yeah.

Isabella
It’s kind of like your first glimpse into your future as a plant biologist. What did you do after that? How did you grapple with changing your plans?

Natanella
Yeah, so actually it took a while because I was fascinated but at that time, not too long before I left the Army, I met my now husband and after I think about a year, we bought like a farm in the southern part of Israel. And I really enjoyed playing with this idea I would become a farmer. It didn’t feel right to not go to the university and at least have my bachelor’s degree.

And at the time I was working with this lab, I also did rappelling instructor course. Well, so rappelling is like the opposite of rock climbing, it’s going down with the rope—I don’t know if everybody knows that. So there I met a guy that said he’s going to study geology in Ben-Gurion University, which is a southern university which fitted well with me, you know, buying the land there and wanting to move to that part of the country.

Isabella
So, you enrolled and then what did you study there?

Natanella
I was checking the syllabus of courses and stuff in geology, and I ended up signing up for a double bachelor in geology and biology. And and we moved to the southern part of Israel after I worked for a year in in that laboratory. But it turned out that except for two courses that I really loved, which were paleontology and rocks and minerals, I really didn’t feel the same passion I felt when I was talking to those graduate students in the lab I worked in.

I felt, it’s it’s not enough for me. And I remember the moment the decision happened—it was a in physical chemistry course, you can imagine how exciting that was. But I remember that specific lesson that I suddenly felt the passion to go back and study and start my my studies in plant science. It was like a lightning struck me and I was like, I have to do this.

Isabella
How did it feel to finally be studying plant biology?

Natanella
Yeah. So I completely remember myself sitting there. Of course, you have to go through all the fundamentals of algebra and physics and chemistry, and some of that was interesting for me as well. Once it kind of it was in the context that I was more interested in. But I remember myself sitting in some of the plant biology courses and really feeling so curious and so excited.

And in my head I literally was thinking, How do people study anything else? Like, this is so great and this is so interesting. Of course other people are very excited about other things and other things are super exciting, but for me to feel that what I’m doing is the most exciting thing is just where I want to be.

Isabella
And did you feel like a scientist yet?

Natanella
No, no, no, no, no. At that point, I definitely did not see myself as a scientist. And that was this thing that would take still a lot of, you know, me getting used to the idea that I am a scientist. Definitely in my bachelor’s—first of all, my passion to plant biology comes, still to this day, I feel like more from the land side and like the grounded, like being able to do something or to understand something about nature rather than the more scientific side of things.

So I do science, and I learned how to do science, and I definitely do research. But my curiosities is is very much based on that being in plants. And again, probably because no one around me was a scientist and you still to this day unfortunately don’t see many, many women scientists. Most my teachers and, you know, the researchers were men.

And so, I just think it was a process for me to be able to think of myself as a scientist.

Isabella
So, what made you decide to continue and do a doctorate?

Natanella
So, in Israel, you do a master’s before you do your doctorate. So, I definitely took it step by step. I didn’t see myself, you know, as a PI from my bachelor studies.

Isabella
PI stands for principal investigator, which is a scientist leading a particular research study or leading a lab group.

Natanella
And then after I was about to finish my bachelor’s, I thought of working in a flower breeding company or I had these two labs I was thinking of joining: one did breeding in garlic because breeding is something I’m really interested in, as I mentioned, genetics and breeding, but the other lab I ended up doing my master’s degree was a lab that does hormone signaling in plants. And so, it was like I didn’t see myself in research, I didn’t know, but I really liked the field of research and I thought they do interesting things.

And then in my master’s degrees, I realize how amazing research is and what it is and how different it is from just, you know, bachelor’s. So once I was fascinated by how you do research and how you ask the questions and making the discoveries, then I was kind of hooked and I continued to direct, direct track to PhD.

But I must say the academic path is definitely like a rollercoaster. You have times when you’re like, you think you have the most amazing job in the world and you have other times where you want to quit and you’re like, What am I doing this? It’s so hard and it’s so difficult! At a point where you’re really hooked, which I don’t know if fortunately or unfortunately I am in, then it’s like you learn to deal with failure.

I think this is actually one of the most important parts. I think it’s very hard to be a scientist if you’re not good with facing failure. So, once I learned that, and that was during my master’s degrees, it enabled me to pursue what I love about research.

Voice over
Illustrious past, groundbreaking present, bold future. It’s all happening at the Salk Institute. To hear the latest news coming out of Salk, visit Salk.edu, and join our new exclusive media channel Salk Streaming where you will find interviews with our scientists, videos on recent studies, and public lectures by our world-renowned professors. You can also explore our award-winning magazine Inside Salk and join our monthly newsletter to stay up to date on the world within these walls.

Isabella
And by the end of your doctoral studies, you had a family and you were completing your hardest degree yet, and you realized there is this lack of support for others in that place. Can you tell me about that time and how you dealt with that?

Natanella
Yeah, I had two very young daughters—I think probably three and one, but at that sort of age. And for me it was important also to nurse for at least a year and year and a half. So I would go in the middle of the day, I would stop an experiment, I would go to a microscope room, I would do what I need.

And that was very overwhelming. Also, my husband had a military career, so he wouldn’t be home except for once a week and then on the weekends, so it was very intense. It just felt like I wanted someone that has been there before and has a perspective that I lack to just talk to me and say, Listen, I see you.

You know, these are very hard, you know, difficult years, but it’s worth it. And they pass and it gets better. And after, I realized there’s no such mentoring program for female PhD students, so I decided to initiate one in the institute where I was doing my degree. I co-founded this program with professor from that institute, and it turned out that there’s a strong need and the female PIs, which unfortunately are not many in the department we were in, were happy to help, and especially once they saw the response of the doctorate students and how they had a strong need for that.

That turned out to be a very successful program, which continued even when I left and moved here.

Isabella
Did that inspire your endeavor into creating WISER in San Diego?

Natanella
Yes, a WISER is a global mentoring initiative, it’s not local to San Diego at all, and it’s actually purposed for Israeli female postdocs from all fields of research. We have now, I think about maybe 200 or maybe more postdocs that are assigned to the program and about 350 PIs, both females and males, that are willing to mentor individual postdocs that want that.

And when I say mentor, it’s important to say that this is informal mentoring. They don’t help us with, you know, writing grants or our papers, it’s nothing like that. It’s basically giving, I would say, on average, giving an hour a month or in two months at the beginning of the mentorship relationship where they just give us from their perspective and can give advice on specific issues we’re deliberating on.

Isabella
It so nice you were able to create a support network like that. That’s very amazing. How did you end up in San Diego, though?

Natanella
So, my last year of my doctoral studies, I started to think about the next step and it was it was a process. I had to think about what field of research I want to focus on, do I stay in the same field that I was studying in my doctorate, or do I change fields? And I ended up interviewing in two amazing laboratories, one in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories and one here at Salk with Joe Ecker. Both labs are really, you know, top notch in in our field.

And they also both said amazing things about each other, which was awesome. That’s the type of people I’m looking for. So, I think San Diego, the weather, and the Institute kind of made the difference because I come from a very warm country. Then I decided very fast that San Diego and Joe Ecker’s lab would be my choice and I let them know, and and shortly after I arrived.

Isabella
And what kind of research are you doing now in the Ecker lab?

Natanella
So, I’m actually studying how plants recover from drought, because plant scientists now have a pretty good understanding of how plants respond to drought and what are the mechanisms they use in order to tolerate drought and survive It—but very few studies really focused and how they recover. I started with doing a fine scale time course, looking at gene expression during recovery.

What I found is that there are thousands of recovery-specific genes. And when I say recovery-specific, I mean that these genes are expressed in normal levels during drought compared to a well-watered plant, but specifically upon re-watering, they are either upregulated or downregulated to do something in this recovery process. So, they play a specific role during recovery.

So, these numbers for me were really reassuring that this is a process that has just been overlooked, but there is a lot to discover there. And I use single cell technologies to really look into this process and try to figure out what biological processes takes place upon this recovery phase.

Isabella
Would you say your research is particularly relevant when studying climate change?

Natanella
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my my recent discovery in my first paper from this postdoc found that under this first phase of recovery, immediately after re-watering the plants, literally as fast as 15-minutes after rehydration, there is an immune activation of the plant’s immune system that is apparently linked to this recovery process. And what we showed is that this immune activation confers pathogen resistance upon bacterial infection.

So basically, plants, before they start regenerating some teach tissue damage or resuming growth upon rehydration, they first kind of battle off any bacterial infection they may encounter in this recovery phase, which is it is actually a period of high bacterial infection risk, because what happens in this point of rehydration is that during drought, the immune system is suppressed and upon rehydration stomata, which are small pores in plants leaves, rapidly open.

So, we have these holes opening in the leaves of the plants. In addition, we have water flow approaching the plants, whether it’s agricultural irrigation or raindrops, which hold a certain concentration of bacteria, and a percentage of those are pathogenic to plants. All of these things combined together makes this period of rehydration after drought a high bacterial infection risk period.

These plants that were able to rapidly activate the immune system were apparently able to survive and recover and continue with their growth.

Isabella
Wow. That’s really interesting. And do you feel like the collaborative nature of Salk, combined with your connections back in Israel, expand these scientific questions you have?

Natanella
Absolutely. And it’s it’s more so than the quantity of plant biologists it’s the quality of plant biologist at Salk because that is really exceptional, I think. Even more than that, the laboratory I am in is basically part plant biology and part neuroscience, which is even more amazing than being in just a plant biologist environment because, for example, I recently took a technology from our neuroscientist lab, which is able to look at DNA methylation and they do it for the brain.

They look at DNA methylation profiles from single cells in the brain and also the transcriptome, which is all the genes that are expressed in a certain cell in the brain. So, we were able to take that technology from them and do it on plants. That’s also pretty amazing and exciting and really drives, I think, plant biology forward.

Isabella
And what keeps you busy outside of these exciting plant biology discoveries?

Natanella
California is one of the best places to do a postdoc, I think, because all the amazing universities and academic-related, you know, things that California has to offer, but also because of all the amazing state parks. And I feel like that’s just an endless playground for adults and also for my kids who have been to Big Sur, Joshua Tree, even to Crater Lake in Oregon.

So, we really like to hike and travel. I also took up surfing when I arrived in San Diego because how can you not? So, I enjoyed that as well. Once overcoming the coolness of the ocean, then it’s all good. And another thing I really enjoy doing, I have started in my last two years of my doctorate degree, is yoga.

I did a two-year yoga teacher training in Israel, which was very comprehensive, and I was able to really integrate that into my life, which I really enjoy.

Isabella
Has the rest of your family made San Diego home, too?

Natanella
I think they have a wonderful time here, and we do take advantage of this experience of relocating to a different country. I think it’s it’s a great gift to kids. And as a family, the strongest difference I feel, I don’t think they’re missing, that is is that in Israel you have a stronger community. Also in Israel, when they were younger, my husband was in the military service, so grandparents had a huge part of their lives.

So, to me that was a great help but it also was just we are a very close family.

Isabella
Do you ever think about what would have happened had you not ended up working on that specific farm with those geneticists and you’d gone on and done your business degree?

Natanella
Mostly I don’t have time to do that, but when a major experiment fails, I definitely go to those areas in my head and think like, Maybe I should do something else. Mostly I’m not very serious in those thoughts because I am very focused on my careers as an investigator. I really like the path I’m in, which was not obvious to me, so I rarely do that.

But if, to speak generally, I think if I wouldn’t do this, I could do I could do many different things. But I think the main thing that would be there regardless to whether I would start a startup company or be a consultant or be a yoga teacher, I think it would be around helping people that had maybe less opportunities than we had to do something big that they obviously can do, but maybe had less opportunities to do so.

Isabella
Thank you so much for chatting with me about your life and your science. It was a pleasure having you.

Natanella
Thank you very much. I really enjoyed it.

Voice over
Beyond Lab Walls is a production of the Salk Office of Communications. To hear the latest science stories coming out of Salk, subscribe to our podcast and visit Salk.edu to join our new exclusive media channel Salk Streaming. There you’ll find interviews with our scientists, videos on our recent studies, and public lectures by our world-renowned professors. You can also explore our award-winning magazine Inside Salk and join our monthly newsletter to stay up to date on the world within these walls.