"Take Five" with E.E. Just and Whitman Fellow Sally Seraphin

"Take Five" is an occasional feature in which we pose five questions to a Marine Biological Laboratory community member about their career, dreams, and passions. Here we profile Sally Seraphin, an E.E. Just and Whitman Fellow at the MBL and an assistant professor of neuroscience at Trinity College.

Seraphin, a Haitian-American, received a B.S. from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, an M.Sc. from Oxford University in England, and a Ph.D. from Emory University, where she examined the effects of differential rearing on brain dopamine and behavior in rhesus monkeys. She completed postdoctoral fellowship training in cellular and molecular neurobiology, as well as developmental psychobiology, at Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital.

How and when did you first connect with the MBL?

In the summer of 1996, I was a participant in the UMass Boston Research Experience for Undergraduates program. I spent that summer living in Falmouth and doing research on endangered seabirds. Jeremy Hatch, my advisor, and Ian Nisbet, another researcher, had connections at MBL, and several times over the course of the summer we would go into Woods Hole to get supplies or to connect with people they knew. I learned that the MBL is this amazing place, this mecca for research. It left an impression in my young brain.

In 2021, I was a new faculty member at Trinity College. I applied for a fellowship opportunity called the , and I received it. That ended up being a blessing in several different ways, because it introduced me to a cohort of BIPOC faculty who were in similar stages in their careers. It was held at MBL that year, and we had a couple of presentations by year-round MBL researchers, including Marko Horb. That was my first introduction to the National Xenopus Resource, and I was really excited about the work that they were doing.

When the applications opened up for the MBL Whitman Fellowship, I immediately contacted Marko. He and I began to carve out this project that I would do, and he agreed to support my application. That was the beginning of three summers spent at MBL.

Can you tell me about your research or work at the MBL?

In my first summer (2022), we bred red-eyed tree frogs for the first time, and it was probably the first time that had been done in a research setting in about 20 years. We accomplished things by coming to MBL in the summers that we couldn’t have otherwise. It was just me and my students and the frogs, but being at MBL gave us access to all the technology and all the amphibian expertise—not just Marko, but his staff and even visiting scientists. It was the perfect place to launch these neotropical frogs as a novel experimental system to study early-life stress.

I chose red-eyed and glass frogs because they could help us model something very specific about how children are impacted by early childhood adversity. Red-eyed embryos will hatch prematurely from the egg if they experience a threat on the leaf, and the glass frog eggs will hatch prematurely if the dad abandons them. My hunch is that what they do is quite ancient, and therefore relevant as a construct for human precocious puberty and human early senescence in the face of early stress.

We developed a differential rearing protocol that involves dividing clutches in half: forcing some to hatch prematurely, allowing some to hatch late, and then collecting tissue at regular intervals so we could look at morphology and gene expression.

Eventually, we were able to show that there is a developmental divergence between early- and late-hatched animals. They basically grow apart in terms of their patterns of gene expression over time, with some genes that are overexpressed in early-hatchers being underexpressed in late-hatchers and vice versa. The overexpressed genes that are driving this signal include six genes that are ancient but as yet understudied, and we think may be specifically related to reorganizing a body for a faster developmental rate.

What accomplishments in your career or life have meant the most to you?

I come from a family that has a very deep and long legacy of trauma, and studying the early life effects of stress is a deeply personal thing. To have persisted in studying stress and really trying to untangle how it leaves a permanent mark on the mind for this long, I think, is a triumph.

Also, to see that I was able to step away and mindfully parent—invent a style of parenting that I didn't necessarily experience myself, and that maybe was informed by my work—and then be able to make it back onto the tenure track with a productive lab, is probably a bigger feat than getting into graduate programs or getting postdoctoral fellowships.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced in the scientific world as a result of being Black?

When I was at UMass in undergrad, there was still quite a disparity in terms of [Black] students majoring in STEM fields versus social sciences. I think what helped me was having started out as an undergraduate at a historically Black institution, Howard University. Being a STEM major there solidified my belief that STEM is what people of color do. When I transferred to UMass Boston, I really caught my stride as a student of science, and it didn't really bother me as much that I was often the only one doing things in a lab and being Black, because I had been to Howard.

I was also a Ronald E. McNair Fellow at UMass Boston, and that allowed me to connect with other science students from underrepresented backgrounds—not only at UMass Boston, but also nationally through conferences. That helps support identity development as a Black scientist.

But it got harder and harder the further up the ladder of academia I went. I am actually, I think, the first Black American to have graduated from my Ph.D. program at Emory in 2004. I was in the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, and as far as I can recall, there was not another Black graduate student, male or female. Then when I was a postdoc at Harvard, the only Black people I saw were the support staff, except when I was at McLean Hospital doing my research: I had a small network of fellow postdocs who were from diverse backgrounds, and we sort of clung together. When I was at Oxford, same thing: I was the only Black person in my Master's program. And it was a strange experience.

It was also strange when I went to do field work in Uganda as a Black scientist, in a majority-Black nation where people of color are usually field assistants. I was also female, which was unconventional. I was actually cautioned against wearing shorts in the forest like American and European researchers would do, because I would be seen more as a Ugandan because of my skin color, and it would be perceived as inappropriate or a sexual invitation. So it was weird to be Black in that context, as a scientist instead of a field assistant and a woman instead of a man. The intersectionality all came into play.

I can't say that you will ever get used to being the only one in a room—it's something you notice all the time. But you accept it for what it is and try to create change by inviting other people of color to join the fun and helping them succeed. That's really the only option.

What are your goals for 2025, either personal or professional?

My goals for 2025 are to get a lot published and to resist everything that interferes with my personal and professional well-being and that potentially negatively impacts my community.