Question: How is it in the lab and what do you focus you work around?

David Walker-Sünderhauf answered on 6 Mar 2019:

So I probably spend on average ~30% of my day in the lab (although some days will be ~90% lab work, and others none at all).
For lab work, it’s important to plan through what I’m doing (for example, last week I set up a mixed culture of different bacterial species, and today before I went into a lab I sat down and planned out onto how many different plates I want to plate this mixed culture for analysis, then went into the lab and made the media necessary for it.) I usually have at least 2-3 different things I’m working on in the lab at the same time, so it’s important to keep track of different to-do lists and what I still have to do! Most importantly, everything I do in the lab I have to write down into my lab book, this lab book is the most important document for scientists who work in a lab as it tracks everything you did, how exactly you did it, if it worked out and if it didn’t.

The things itself I do in the lab can be broadly split into working with bacteria (or playing with bacteria as I like to think of it) by designing different experiments, and into setting up study systems by manipulating DNA or genetically modifying different bacterial strains. Overall, these things do involve the same or similar methods over and over again, so it is a lot of following protocols (lab “recipes” or instructions)!

To focus what I need to do, I usually look at the most important thing in the lab I want to get done that day, estimate how long it will take and if I have long waiting periods during it, and then fit in the other things around that.