Natalie Kuldell (00:02):
All right, Sarah. Hi. Thanks for joining.
Sarah Seaton (00:05):
Thanks so much for having me. It’s so great to see you.
Natalie Kuldell (00:08):
It’s really great to see you too, and nice to see you in the office. What a strange and wonderful thing.
Sarah Seaton (00:15):
I know. Yes, it is very, very bizarre. It’s a, it’s mostly empty here in the office, but the lab personnel are still reporting it and, and doing our thing so
Natalie Kuldell (00:25):
Great and lucky, and hopefully more of us will be able to get back to normal soon. Maybe we can start just by having you introduce who you are and where you work and what you do.
Sarah Seaton (00:36):
Of course. So my name is Sarah Seaton and I’m a senior scientist here in the Boston based Indigo Agriculture, which is, as you might imagine from the name, it’s an agricultural biotech startup that has a microbial connection and that our products in part are driven by natural microbes that we put on seeds to promote plant growth under stressful conditions. So we’re really trying to promote a natural solution to some of the agricultural issues that are facing the planet such as you know: increased fertilizer use, decreased availability of water in many cases. And so we believe the microbiome of the plants can impart some sort of advantage to those struggling plants under stressful conditions.
Natalie Kuldell (01:31):
It’s so smart. It really feels so much like the future that we need to get towards, right? Where just a better relationship with biology, and especially our food and agriculture. What a wonderful job. And so are you, you’re a senior scientist, are you in the lab most days or are you running a group?
Sarah Seaton (01:53):
So that’s a great question. Things have changed a little bit with sort of the COVID situation where we’re trying to limit the number of people who are in the labs at any given time. So that means over the last year or so, I’ve actually got to spend a bit more time in the lab. But I do lead a team here of microbiologists and molecular biologists for what’s called our Microbiology and Molecular Core. So I have a team of about six currently, and we’re in the labs mostly. And we’re essentially isolating new microbes that go into our culture collection here. We now have tens of thousands of microbes housed in our freezers because as you can imagine for every one product that launches thousands of microbes have to be tested and validated. So yeah, I have the coolest job, I think of essentially running a microbe library here at Indigo.
Natalie Kuldell (02:49):
That’s such a great way to think about it, a “microbe library.” That’s amazing. So you know, I think many of the BioBuilder students might be familiar culturing some microbes like E. coli, or maybe Saccaromyces cerevisiae. But culturing new microbes must have a whole new set of challenges to it, right?
Sarah Seaton (03:09):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So Indigo has kind of an interesting approach to what microbes were sort of focusing on. So it’s the idea of sort of enriching for microorganisms that are best associated with plant health. What we do is we actually isolate directly from plant tissue. So we’re focusing on what are called endophytes and those are the microbes, the bacteria and fungi that physically live within plant tissue. So that actually adds another layer of exciting kinds of process to this because my team is also responsible for sourcing those plants from the field. So in many cases we get to actually go to the field, collect crop plants that are resilient to some environmental stress, bring those back to the lab. And then that serves as our source of, of the ultimate microbes. And to your point, you know, a lot of these are more fastidious than your typical E. coli or yeast. So we, yeah, we isolate all sorts of really interesting microbes, many of which are novel species that haven’t been described before. So yeah, as an environmental microbiologist, you can imagine that that being a micro hunter for a job is pretty spectacular.
Natalie Kuldell (04:30):
That is spectacular. Wow. A job that I’d be proud to have on my calling card.
Sarah Seaton (04:41):
Yeah. And we always have, we keep a little bin in the lab, we call it our “show and tell” bin for the organisms that look, you know, really dramatic on a plate either they’re pigmented or, you know, some are really filamentous fungus that grows in some interesting way. So we keep those around for lab tours and to impress our non-microbiology friends who may not think of microbes as being really charismatic, but they absolutely can be.
Natalie Kuldell (05:06):
They can be very colorful and diverse and wow. What a great job. So your background is in environmental microbiology, is that right?
Sarah Seaton (05:19):
Yeah. So my PhD is in microbiology. I got it from the University of Georgia and my PhD projects were focused on taking environmental bacteria, soil bacteria, and modifying them to essentially degrade pollutants. So I’m taking metabolic pathways, catabolic pathways in those bugs and improving their ability to actually degrade aromatic compounds that are often associated with things like oil spills or other contaminants in soil. So yeah, I’ve always been interested in how we might harness bacteria to impact some environmental problem. And so that, that’s where it all started.
Natalie Kuldell (06:05):
That’s so cool. And, and when you say always interested, so are you from Georgia? Did you grow up in an agricultural background? Like I have no green thumb, so it would never occur to me to go into plants.
Sarah Seaton (06:22):
Yeah. So I’m actually from North Carolina. I grew up there. All my family’s still in North Carolina. I actually did grow up on a farm on a tobacco farm. But I think I’ve always just been interested in sort of the power of microbes and how we might actually harness them to, you know, solve different problems. Yeah, I think I knew I wanted to be a microbiologist when I was a freshman in college. They just sort of struck me as interesting and, you know, you peer through a microscope and that’s a memorable moment for a lot of students, I think when you see these things for the first time. And then being able, I think to manipulate DNA. I won’t tell you how long ago I was in grad school maybe, but you know, we’ve come a long way with being able to modify organisms. And then it was really exciting to be able to go in and put a new gene into a bacterium and see how that was actually able to completely alter the phenotype and allow that organism to do something it couldn’t before you manipulated it. So yeah, that’s sort of what really struck me as exciting. And at the time it was much easier to do that in bacteria than it was in any other organism. So that’s sort of where I settled
Natalie Kuldell (07:41):
It’s so great. The notion of harnessing the power of microorganisms to do useful things and the control that we have, or, you know, some abilities that we have to manipulate the cells with DNA code is really at the heart of how BioBuilder teaches too. I think it comes as a surprise to students that biology is not just the study of the world as we’ve inherited it. Right. But that you can add a layer of engineering to it, to use biology, to meet certain goals and end points. So you’ve been a wonderful mentor through our BioBuilder activities. Do you want to say a little bit about the students or about the interactions you’ve had?
Sarah Seaton (08:28):
Yeah, so yeah, we were very lucky two summers ago to actually host a BioBuilder student in the labs here at Indigo. She was at the time a rising senior at Boston Latin school. Her name was Linh and yeah, she was such a breath of fresh air. She came in and I think here at Indigo things are really fast paced. I think that’s probably the nature of most startups. So I can only imagine coming into that atmosphere, you know, as a teenager. I’m sure that was very daunting, but she really just came in and contributed to the team almost immediately. So she isolated hundreds of microbes during her short time working in the labs and yeah, I mean she’s the only student we’ve had as an intern here. I think because of, you know, COVID times we haven’t been able to host any interns for the last year, but I’m hopeful that, you know, that’s something we can continue to support because it was certainly like such a great experience for us and hopefully for Linh as well.
Natalie Kuldell (09:36):
I know, I know it was an amazing really a life-changing experience for Linh. I think the opportunity for young, innovative science and engineering – interested students to have a chance to see science in action and engineering in action is really meaningful. It really can make it something that they have a little energy to pursue. Right. They have a commitment to it once they’ve tasted the reality of working in that kind of a situation. So, thank you. Did you have somebody that sort of helped you along the way to sort of, to commit to this career?
Sarah Seaton (10:16):
Oh, absolutely. There’s been so many wonderful mentors along the way. I think I could list several, but I I’ll start with my PhD advisor who actually I was lucky enough when I was in college. So I actually went to a small liberal arts school in North Carolina which was a great teaching university, but not a lot of research going on on a small campus like that. So I actually had the opportunity when I was still in my undergraduate days to do it was it’s called an REU program, an NSF REU program. And I actually did that at the University of Georgia and met who would later become my PhD advisor. So then she was able to recruit me to come back to Georgia for my PhD. And she’s just always, even now, you know, 15 years later, she’s still advocates for me. You know, is always willing to listen if I have something that you know, I need advice on or need a recommendation letter. I think she’s always really just been there and been supportive both personally and professionally, which I think is really important when you’re considering a mentor. Someone you can rely on.
Natalie Kuldell (11:34):
I think she has clearly taught that to you. What you touch on is so important. I also continue to rely on my network of mentors, years and years after we’ve finished working together. For personal questions, professional questions, letters that have to get written. We are all sort of turning around and helping the next one in line. So it is something that I think as a younger student, I didn’t fully appreciate that these actually are lifelong professional interactions that you gain when you commit to working together on a project. So how wonderful
Sarah Seaton (12:14):
Your network may grow as you advance in your career. But I think they’re really special relationships are the ones that you sort of maintain over the course of several decades in some cases.
Natalie Kuldell (12:25):
Well I am sure that’s what makes you such a wonderful mentor and that it made such a difference to Linh as well. I sure do hope that we can get more BioBuilder students. They’re working with you. Your work is fascinating, and you’re just a wonderful teacher and role model for them. So thank you!
Sarah Seaton (12:43):
Thank you so much. That’s very kind.