From the ranch to the research lab: A journey in genetic discovery

For Emmanuel Solis, the journey toward earning a PhD in medical and molecular genetics began on a horse ranch in Murrieta, Calif. It may not be a typical path, but without his experiences there, he would not have ended up at Indiana University School of Medicine or met his forever study partner.  

The son of a horse trainer, Solis spent summers working on the ranch. It was a great way to learn the resilience he would need to complete his degree. It was also there that he discovered how much he loved learning and first discovered genetics when he picked up a book about how horses get their coloring.  

"There's this whole genetics behind it, depending on what crosses you have. So even from a little kid, I was interested in genetics," Solis explained. "That was my jumping off point where I knew I could get obsessed about anything. Then in high school, biology really caught my interest."

While life at the ranch was a factor in putting Solis on this path, there was a family tie that led to his passion for research: His older sister, Maricela, developed a rare disease when she was 8 years old.  

“My sister had a disease called Legge-Calve-Perthes Disease. It is a disease where there’s a necrosis of the femoral head,” Solis stated. “It is not well known what causes it, but they do study it a lot in larger animals. The funny thing is, we learned about it in our bone biology class, and that is when I first realized most studies were done on horses and other livestock. That’s when I went to my dad and was like, can I borrow one of the horses to study?” 

After her treatment, the family noticed that she wasn’t recovering as fast as she should have. It was at this point that they found out that his sister also had a severe vitamin D deficiency that was causing slow recovery.  

"She was placed on high vitamin D supplementation, which eventually led to the development of kidney stones, yet her vitamin D levels were still insufficient. She would go from deficiency to insufficiency. That was one of the things that always interested me. What causes a vitamin D deficiency?" Solis asked. 

When Solis came to IU and entered the medical school, he had plans to study bone biology. But meeting his mentor, Ken White, PhD, changed his trajectory. White had studied the molecular genetics of metabolic bone diseases and had played an instrumental role in discovering the novel hormone FGF23, a hormone used in vitamin D metabolism. White's lab has been funded to study FGF23 activity. This was the perfect spot for Solis to study the transcriptional control of vitamin D synthesis in the kidney.  

"At the time I joined the lab, that wasn’t my project for my PhD," Solis said. "It was something totally different, but the data just started speaking for itself. At that point, I had enough data to propose it as a project to Ken. The transcription factor had a unique pattern in the absence and presence of FGF23 activity, so we rolled with it."  

While working in the lab, one of Solis's biggest supporters was his fiancée, now wife, Areli Javier. They made the decision to come to Indiana University together, and they both ended up studying the same hormone FGF23; her focus is how the hormone affected the heart in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.  

"Anytime we are coming home from lab, we're just talking about different stuff about biology,” explained Solis. “So, even our car rides home are filled with more science and what we are doing in the lab."

The two met during their undergraduate program during an organismal biology course. Then one day in the library, they became study partners.  

"At the time we had organic chemistry together, too, so I guess you could say we had chemistry," Solis joked. "One day Areli caught me going up the elevator in the library. She darted in and asked me if I wanted to study. It was the first time anyone had ever asked me that, so I said yes. Even now, we still study and read papers together. We give each other edits on our grants, presentations, and things like that. So, through it all she has been my study partner."  

The two have leaned on each other a lot over the past few years. They found that since they were both trying to achieve the same goal, they had a level of understanding that other couples may not have. And achieve they did, as both finished their PhDs before jetting off to the Philippines to tie the knot. They then returned to IU to start their post-doc careers.  

"I would say to pursue this pathway that you need passion," explained Solis. "There's going to be some very tough times and a lot of times that will make you question why you are here. So, from the get-go, you need to have a solid idea of why you are here and a passion for this career. Once you have that, you have to keep it and life will try to kick it out of you at times, but as long as you keep your love for the science, that is the most important thing."