I was born into a middle-class family of doctors in India and grew up in the 1980s on a Westernised diet of the BBC, classic literature and Scientific American.
As a child, I was fascinated by a Time magazine series on archaeology, “Ancient Civilizations,” and in particular by an article on the cryptic code found on prehistoric seals from the Indus Valley Civilization dating back to 3 000 years. My dream was to become an archaeologist, which was not compatible with my deep interest in biology. Everyone around me thought that my family's privilege and support, coupled with my natural inclination toward science and writing, would inevitably lead me toward biomedical science. And that's what happened.
Yamini Dalal
Yamini Dalal used to ride her second-hand classic Cannondale bike in Seattle; now she pedals through Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C.
At 22, I moved to the United States for graduate school. My older brother had started working in Chicago and paid for my application and exams. To be near him, I focused on schools in the Midwest, hoping for a full scholarship. I spent a year as a teaching assistant in Terre Haute before starting my PhD with Arnie Stein at Purdue, where I was funded by teaching 20 hours a week for four years.
Stein was in one of the original founding chromatin labs at the National Institutes of Health, where I am now a tenured principal investigator. We worked in the basement of the infamous Lilly Hall, surrounded by ecology and evolution labs. So I became friends with graduate students from all disciplines, from parts of the United States I had never heard of.
Many of these friends had worked full-time to pay off significant undergraduate debt before returning to do their PhDs in their 30s. I saw this, coupled with Purdue’s intensely international atmosphere, and realized two things: First, privilege is not simply a function of where you were born, the color of your skin, or the accent you speak. Second, no matter what your background, if you really want to accomplish something, your passion and drive can help you overcome adversity.
Some of my friends at Purdue were outdoor enthusiasts and musicians, which, given my experience with my fellow immigrant graduates, seemed inversely related to being a molecular biologist. From them, I learned things about America, hiking, and other outdoor activities that I never imagined I could enjoy. I hiked in the woods around Seely Lake in Montana, watching for mountain lions and grizzly bears, and rode a decrepit second-hand bike along the Wabash River in Tippecanoe County. These adventures changed my life. I discovered a strange affinity with the wilderness, because it challenged me in a way that few other things had done up to that point.
When I was choosing postdoctoral positions, the outdoors was a big influence on me. On my 29th birthday, I interviewed Steve Henikoff at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center; he and I once had a stimulating conversation while we were both stuck in the Bozeman airport. The breathtaking Seattle and mountain setting was a major selling point, coupled with an ethos of intellectual equality at the Hutch.
Exploring chromatin structure among an international crowd of postdocs, I embraced the egalitarian ethic that defines science at the Hutch. The first snowfall, people would ski Steven’s Pass; the first clear day, people would rush to hike the Cascades. My first short hike with an immigrant friend from Germany, who now leads a clinical biomarker team at BioNTech, turned into an arduous 8.5-mile, 3,000-foot trek. We got a bit lost on the way back, talking about chromatin, small-molecule markers in cancer biology, and the implausibility of yetis, while something unmistakably large rustled in the crisp twilight behind us. That conversation, coupled with the fact that three friends developed malignancies during our postdoctoral years, marked the beginning of my interest in cancer biology.
By the time I was 30, I had saved enough to buy a used classic Cannondale bike. Driving under a wet bridge in Seattle, my tires got stuck in the slippery grooves left by the historic streetcar lines and I crashed on my head without a helmet. After a few hours of observation in the emergency room, I returned by bicycle to take advantage of the precious time reserved for the electron microscope. I was visualizing biochemically purified centromeres from fly cells, which had never been attempted before.
That night, I captured images of strangely flattened chromatin structures, leading me to fear that I had suffered a loss of visual perspective from the fall. Micrographs taken the following week validated what I had seen. These findings, supported by years of hard biochemical and biophysical work, led to a major breakthrough that challenged existing paradigms. The next few years were not easy. I faced intense opposition from leading researchers. Some of the criticism was rigorous; some seemed gratuitous. Yet, to quote a famous senator, “she persisted.” I did not persist alone; the support of friends, family, mentors, and colleagues made the journey more enlightening than traumatic. It led to another surprising discovery: True allies are not always the ones you might expect from outward appearances.
On my 34th birthday, I signed a federal contract to be a principal investigator at the NIH. I’ve been running my lab for 16 wonderful years now, and I still feel like every day is an adventure. As I ride through beautiful Rock Creek Park, which runs through the nation’s capital, on the same Cannondale I bought 20 years ago, the bright spark of intuition unleashes some surprisingly good ideas—and a few questionable ones.
I have recently been appointed as an Honorary Visiting Professor at IIT-Mumbai, a leading research institute in my home country, starting this fall. It will be a privilege for me to begin thanking the scientific community that has supported my scientific life.
The best part of this journey is working with talented colleagues, united by our curiosity about the fundamental nature of eukaryotic life encoded in our chromosomes and its contribution to cancer progression. This shared dream is made more powerful by the diversity of origin stories that have shaped us, challenges that have refined us, family that supports us, and taxpayers who make these advancements possible.
As an Indian-American immigrant, I am proud and grateful to be part of this scientific diaspora.
