Dr. Elizabeth Heath-Heckman

Dr. Elizabeth Heath-Heckman is an Assistant Professor in MGI. Here are her responses to the Micro Biography questions: 

How and when did you become interested in the field(s) of microbiology, genetics, and/or immunology?

I really became interested in microbiology and immunology after attending a summer camp on the history of disease.  (Yes, I went to nerd camp and no, I am not ashamed – it is the same one Lady Gaga went to, look it up.) I was always very into history and learning about the outsized influence that microbes had on our society as a whole made started an obsession with how we live and die with our microbes.  In college I realized that after being steered away from STEM earlier on that solving puzzles by way of laboratory research gave me a lot of joy, and I completed my Honor’s thesis at UChicago in the lab of Susan and Bob Daum working on MRSA, VISA, and VRSA.  However, a strong course backing in evolution and an incident where I had to quickly bleach all of the surfaces in Susan’s lab lest I colonize myself with VRSA led me to think about working on beneficial microbes instead. A class on Invertebrate Biology taught by Michael LaBarbera made me fall in love with invertebrate animals and microbial symbioses that they host. The vast majority of the microbes that you interact with in your life are beneficial or benign, and all of animal evolution has occurred in their presence. This fundamental intertwining of metazoan and microbial evolution made me want to study beneficial microbes, especially in non-traditional models, and so I chose to work towards my PhD at UW-Madison in the lab of Margaret McFall-Ngai working on the squid-vibrio symbiosis. To make a long story short I never looked back and now run a lab with the only Hawaiian Bobtail squid in Michigan.

Were there any particular people or events who were influential in your journey?

I guess I covered this in Question 1.  Should have read all the questions first I suppose.

How did you come to be a part of this department?

I joined MSU as an assistant professor in Integrative Biology in the summer of 2020.  Since my work focuses on the influence of bacteria on their animal hosts, I very much work at the nexus of several fields of study, and to support my research by the end of the year I was co-appointed in MGI.

What is your main role / research area right now and why is it important?

I am currently an Assistant Professor, so I head a lab on the 6th floor that is often running around trying to keep our squid happy while unraveling the mechanisms by which beneficial bacterial symbionts influence host development, physiology, and evolution.  All animals came into being in the presence of bacteria – the good, the bad, and the ugly – and practically all of our physiological processes have evolved to take place while receiving bacterial cues and having to respond to them appropriately.  We use the squid-vibrio system to determine the molecular mechanisms underlying these interactions, which more often than not have analogs in humans.  We are both animals, after all.

How do you see your role / research evolving?

Well, as an assistant professor I recently transitioned away from doing the bulk of my own research and towards enabling my lab to do their own.  I always tell them that my job is to make sure that they can do their job – to provide funding, guidance, and support to let them become independent scientists in their own right.  As for my research, well, you always have to follow the science and you can’t really control where it will go all of the time.  For example, early on at MSU I performed a fiddly RNASeq experiment in order to identify developmental factors in our squid, and what we found was a huge neuronal signature instead, which led to the writing (and funding!) of my first sole-PI grant.  I am once again wading into strange waters, and I couldn’t be happier – neurons really are amazing cells.

What types of activities are you involved in outside of work / research?

So I’m going to be honest – I don’t have tenure and I do have children, so I do a fair amount of work/research, and the rest of the time belongs to my family. As a result I am quite boring.  However when I can sneak it in I love to read, bike, do yoga, knit, and cook.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Yes!  Our lab just moved into the 6th floor and everyone should stop by and say hi.