Natalia Pabón-Mora is Searching for Instructions Hidden Inside Flowers

To some people, a flower may be a splash of color or a thing of beauty to admire in a garden. But to Associate Professor of Biology Natalia Pabón-Mora, a flower is a record of evolutionary problem-solving, an intricate structure built from genetic instructions, environmental signals and millions of years of adaptation.  

Pabón-Mora researches plant development, asking how flowering plants became so remarkably diverse. Why do flowers take on such different shapes? How do plants know when to flower? Why can fruits that come from the same part of a flower — an apple, a tomato, a berry or a dry pod — end up looking and behaving so differently?  

“Nature has already done the experiments for us,” Pabón-Mora said.  

Her Plant Evolutionary Developmental Biology Lab studies developmental genetics and evolutionary biology, a field known as evolutionary developmental biology, or “evo-devo.” In other words, Pabón-Mora and her team compare plants with different forms to understand the genetic instructions that produce those differences. Pabón-Mora is particularly interested in plants outside the handful of familiar laboratory species that have dominated plant biology.  

“For a long time, there were only a few plant species that we could study in depth,” she said. “Now, with genome sequencing and new transformation technologies, we can start asking these questions in many more plants.”  

As one of three new faculty members joining the Biology department in 2026, Pabón-Mora’s interest in plant diversity first began in Colombia, where she grew up surrounded by one of the world’s richest botanical landscapes. As an undergraduate, she saw a presentation explaining the genetic model behind floral organ identity — the instructions that determine which parts of a flower become sepals, petals, stamens or carpels.  

“I was blown away by the fact that people knew the genetic basis of floral identity,” she said. “I thought, ‘That’s a great puzzle. I wonder if this applies to all flowers?’”  

At the time, Colombia offered few opportunities to pursue that question, so Pabón-Mora left the country, eventually earning her Ph.D. at the City University of New York. She later established her research program back in Colombia at the University of Antioquia, where her lab drew on her homeland’s extraordinary plant diversity.  

That work led to one of her team’s most memorable discoveries: a tiny parasitic plant in the family Apodanthaceae. The species, Pilostyles boyacensis, is only about a centimeter across, yet it is evolutionarily linked to one of the most spectacular flowers on Earth, Rafflesia — a parasite from Southeast Asia whose flowers can reach roughly 1.5 meters in diameter.  

The contrast is astonishing. Both plants are highly specialized parasites, living largely through their host plants. They lack the familiar roots, stems and leaves of most flowering plants. Rather than getting their energy from photosynthesis and their nutrients from their roots, Pilostyles boyacensis develops inside the tissues of a legume host and emerges only to produce its miniature flowers.  

“We found this tiny parasite and then discovered that the family that it belongs to it is the sister lineage of the family Rafflesiaceae,” Pabón-Mora said. “That gives us a way to ask how such dramatically different flowers evolved from a common ancestor.”  

At Duke, her lab will continue studying the genetics, development and evolutionary patterns that generate diversity in flowering time, floral form and fruit development.

“Plants have come up with an almost unimaginable diversity of solutions to survive virtually every adversity they encounter.” — Natalia Pabón-Mora,

Looking at orchids, Pabón-Mora’s research has shown that many genes involved in flowering are duplicated or triplicated, and that flowering time in these plants appear to rely less on temperature signals than many familiar species. Instead, light and humidity may play important roles.  

Her research also examines Dutchman’s pipe plants, whose unusual flowers temporarily trap flies. The flowers first receive pollen from visiting insects, then deposit their own pollen on the flies before releasing them. In all species, a colorful structure that looks like a petal is actually a sepal — the protective outer part of a flower that has taken on a new identity.  

Pabón-Mora sees these plants not merely as curiosities, but as essential sources of biological insight. Because plants cannot move away from drought, heat, predators or changing environments, they must adapt in place. Their genomes can sometimes undergo whole-genome duplication, creating additional copies of genes that may take on new functions.  

“Plants have come up with an almost unimaginable diversity of solutions to survive virtually every adversity they encounter,” she said. “They have an extraordinary ability to adapt, survive and generate new forms.”  

That perspective also shapes Pabón-Mora’s vision for her time at Duke. She hopes to build collaborations across campus, working with other disciplines like computational scientists and involving students in research on species that have rarely been studied.   

“People value nature more when they learn something about it,” Pabón-Mora said. “There is so much biodiversity we have not explored. I want our research to help bring that knowledge forward.”