Crafting tales of science with Theanne Griffith

Theanne Griffith can’t help thinking in stories. As a child, dreaming up new worlds and writing about them were two of her favorite activities. And once she turned her attention to science, that tendency didn’t change.

“I tend to see science as a story and the proteins that I’m studying as little characters,” says Griffith, assistant professor of physiology and membrane biology at the University of California, Davis. “I’m always trying to find these connections between the characters.”

That narrative style of thinking has aided her quest to understand how proprioceptors, the neurons that sense body position, may help shape the development of motor neurons.

“We’ve thought for 100 years that [proprioceptors] just detect muscle movement,” she says, “but maybe they’re doing more than that.”

After having her first child, Griffith decided to push that love of storytelling further by writing a children’s book. Seven years later, she has published 15 books as part of two series: a nonfiction chapter book series, “Ada Twist, Scientist: The Why Files,” which was a collaboration with author Andrea Beaty exploring the science behind everyday things, such as why newborn birds cannot fly; and her own fiction series called “The Magnificent Makers,” which follows a pair of friends as they journey through a magical maze where they learn scientific skills, such as how to grow cell cultures. The ninth book in the “Makers” series was published by Random House this week.

Griffith spoke with The Transmitter about how she managed to make her authorship dream happen, why early-career researchers should be less shy about calling themselves experts, and how her writing work has made her better at her job.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

The Transmitter: What led you to your current line of research?

Theanne Griffith: When I was a postdoctoral researcher in Ellen Lumpkin’s lab, I kind of got hooked on voltage-gated sodium channels—specifically this one subtype, NaV1.1. At the time, very, very little was known about NaV1.1 function in the peripheral nervous system. There are thousands of disease-causing mutations that are found in the NaV1.1 gene, and most of these lead to what are traditionally thought of as brain disorders, such as Dravet syndrome. However, these disorders are very multisystemic, and the sensory components had been largely overlooked.

So when I launched my lab in October 2020, we were very interested in what NaV1.1 and other ion channels were doing within the peripheral nervous system. And we made this really fun discovery that NaV1.1 is actually essential for proprioceptive signaling in mice. Now we’re also interested in starting to dive into the non-autonomous effects of somatosensory circuit disruption.

TT: Tell me about somatosensory circuit disruption.

TG: A lot of the work on somatosensation focuses on cell autonomous mechanisms—that is, mechanisms within sensory neurons themselves that control their function. But we have made some recent findings showing that if you disrupt proprioceptive signaling, you have consequences outside of proprioceptors themselves.

There’s also some emerging evidence that in motor neuron disease, proprioceptor function is compromised. We’ve found that just by disrupting proprioception alone, you have effects on motor neuron morphology, which would suggest that you need proprioceptive input for motor neurons to develop normally. And so we’re interested in exploring that signaling pathway and understanding whether disrupting proprioceptive function at any point can induce motor neuron degeneration or if there’s a critical period of development.

TT: How did you get into writing children’s books?

TG: After having my daughter, I just kind of dove into it. I hadn’t started my own lab yet. And I started listening to podcasts and even attended some writers’ conferences to learn about the publishing industry. It’s a very saturated and competitive industry, and so I really took it seriously. I updated my Twitter profile, based on advice from a podcast, and rebranded myself as a neuroscientist and children’s book writer. I hadn’t published anything yet, but I did write children’s books! I also created an author website and a dedicated email address to make it look professional.

Then I participated in a lot of Twitter pitch competitions, where you use hashtags on given days to get the attention of editors and literary agents who are seeking new material. Although I didn’t have actual luck with that, I did get the attention of an editor at Random House by the name of Caroline Abbey. She reached out to me because she wanted a scientist to write a science-themed chapter book series, and I fit that bill. And so I wrote a few sample chapters. We workshopped the ideas. And that’s more or less how the “Magnificent Makers” were born.

Through my work in that series, I was contacted by Abrams Books and Netflix to co-write a new nonfiction series that was going to be based on the children’s book and television show “Ada Twist, Scientist.” So that became this series of chapter books called “Ada Twist Scientist: The Why Files.” I did all of the nonfiction content, and then Andrea Beaty, who wrote the original book, added in the poems and Ada’s voice.

TT: Has your work as a children’s book author changed how you communicate your own research?

TG: When I was a postdoc, I didn’t see the connection. Maybe because as a postdoc, you write, but not like you do as PI. In my job now, I’m just constantly writing grants; it’s like a year-round thing. And I feel that what I’ve really learned how to do in writing kids’ books is make scientific information very accessible. Sometimes an editor will tell me, “This sounds complicated. Can we say this more simply?” And so now after doing this for a while, I can take something very complicated and say it in pretty simple terms if I need to. People often tell me that when I write grants, the drafts are very easy to understand.

TT: How much of your own science makes it into your books?

TG: I would say, more than my science, I put my experiences in science into the books. So in the second Makers book, “Brain Trouble,” we talked about a brain fair, which is a real event and something that I helped out with as a graduate student at Northwestern University. The third book is about our senses. And so we talk about touch, and I put in information about the two-point discrimination test, which is a test that scientists use to determine a person’s tactile sensitivity.

One of my favorite books in the Magnificent Makers series is “The Great Germ Hunt.” It’s about microbiology, which is not my field, but in that book, they’re using wet lab materials that I do use: microscopes, petri dishes, agar. My goal is to make the readers feel like they’re experiencing what it’s like to be a scientist.

TT: What kind of response have you gotten from your colleagues?

TG: My colleagues have all been extremely supportive. I was definitely a little bit nervous, especially when I was a postdoc, about whether I would be viewed as not serious about my science—or maybe not even as good of a scientist—if I wrote these books. But it hasn’t been that response at all. I think I’ve demonstrated that I’m very committed to my career, and that things are going well over here, and that I can also write these books. You know, sometimes scientists take three weeks off and go hike a mountain, and this is the same. This is my mountain.

TT: What would you want to say to other neuroscientists who might want to write their own book?

TG: As scientists, especially as we’re training, we never want to consider ourselves experts. And in our little bubble of science, if you’re a grad student or a postdoc, yes, you’re still gaining expertise. But compared with a general member of the public, even an educated member of the public who doesn’t have a degree in science, you do have expertise. That expertise is attractive to the publishing industry, and you can leverage that as an author—without being a PI and without having a Nobel Prize or any other fancy accolades.