“Ulcerative colitis doesn’t define my identify but it’s definitely driven my motivation here at McMaster” – childhood illness influenced science undergrad’s research project

Ishaan Bhathal was a seriously ill six-year-old boy and no one knew why.

His parents were beyond worried and desperate for a diagnosis. After months of inconclusive consults, the mystery was solved by Dr. Thomas Walters at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Ishaan was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, a type of inflammatory bowel disease.

Along with finally getting an answer and a treatment plan, Ishaan’s future came into focus. He says Dr. Walters demonstrated extraordinary empathy from their first to their final visit together years later when Ishaan’s care at SickKids finished up.

“Dr. Walters spoke to me as a child and later as a teenager and never as a patient or a condition. The entire team was such a huge inspiration – they were like detectives figuring out evolving mysteries and making people’s lives better. I knew right then that I wanted to someday do the same for other families.”

Ishaan became an expert in all things related to gut health from an early age, learning how to keep his ulcerative colitis in remission. It’s now been years since he’s had a flare-up and there’s just a handful of foods he needs to avoid. “The bacteria in our gut affects everything when it comes to our health and well-being.”

This is the story Ishaan told while sitting down for the first time with assistant professor Dr. Emily Choy in the Department of Biology. Ishaan was looking ahead to his senior thesis research project and hoping Emily would agree to be his supervisor.

He’d done his homework, starting with the faculty bios on the department website and reading some of their publications. He went to the department’s annual thesis night where faculty meet with students and scope out potential collaborations. A few days later, Emily delivered a guest lecture in one of Ishaan’s courses.

They shared a love of nature and the outdoors. He chose McMaster in part because the campus greenspaces reminded him of being in a tree-covered backyard. And he switched to studying physiology research in his second year because he was fascinated by the connections between animal and human physiology. “There are some really cool applications and innovations happening in this field of study.” Using acellular fish skin grafts to treat wounds and burns in humans is just one of many examples.

Emily’s research with birds and her work as an Arctic scientist stood out for Ishaan. “Dr. Choy’s so passionate about her research and she’s doing such important work on climate change and conservation. When we talked, everything just clicked.”

Emily not only agreed to welcome Ishaan into her research group – she had a study that aligned perfectly with his interests in gut health and the environment. He’d spend the next year examining changes in gut microbiomes of tree swallows as a result of pollution. Working with graduate students and a team from Environment Canada, Ishaan collected data, conducted DNA extractions and carried out metabarcoding analyses on nestlings at six sites across Southern Ontario. That research has shown changes in nestlings as young as 10 days old. That’s alarming news, says Ishaan. What’s happening in the guts of birds could prove fatal, with the potential to degrade and even collapse ecosystems that support birds, humans and all living things.

Ishaan spun that year-long study into both his senior thesis and an award-winning 12-minute talk at the Biology Undergraduate Symposium – Ishaan won best presentation in the ecology and environment category.

He’s now doing final edits on his thesis while waiting to hear back on his application to medical school where he can join the ranks of empathetic detectives in scrubs and white coats.

“Ulcerative colitis doesn’t define my identify”, says Ishaan. “But it’s definitely driven my motivation here at McMaster.”