• Question: In a lab, what do you do?

    Asked by meet520yoga on 11 Mar 2025. This question was also asked by been520goad.
    • Photo: Zoe Vance

      Zoe Vance answered on 11 Mar 2025:

      I don’t work in what most people would consider a lab, I’m more a computational biologist so all my work is on a computer in more of an office setting. I do a lot of data analysis, write a bit of software, write up my results and read results from other people as well as chatting to my lab mates or going to meetings.

      If I were working in the kind of lab most people probably think of, with white coats and goggles and experiments then I would still be doing a lot of the same things, but I would spend less time on analysis/software and more time setting up experiments to run, making sure any chemicals needed in the lab are made up or ordered, or maybe looking after any lab animals or plants being used in expeeriments.

    • Photo: Graeme Dykes

      Graeme Dykes answered on 25 Mar 2025:

      Most of my career has involved some lab work.
      Typically, we plan to make a molecule to perform a specific task (e.g. inhibit an enzyme’s action)
      Using our knowledge of organic chemistry we try to work out how to make it. It might involve several steps. We look for suitable starting molecules which we can readily buy and order them in.
      Having check on the hazards involved, we mix the starting molecules with other compounds to trigger a change in structure. Sometimes this is on a very small scale ( a few mg) sometimes we need a big stock so, we start with gs or 10 of gs.

      For each step,
      We use analytical chromatography to tell us when the reaction is finished and then preparative chromatography to purify the product. Further analysis by Infra Red, Mass Spectrometry or Nuclear Magnetic Resonance confirms the identity and purity of the product.

      at the end we will have a small sample of purified product which can be passed to the pharmacologists for testing.

      Based on the results, we can modify the molecule design and repeat the process.

      Sometimes it can take many repeat cycles to finally get to a molecule with the right properties.

Comments

  • Photo: sandrarobertson

    sandrarobertson commented on :

    The lab I work in, we make lots of different solutions which can be anything from 25mL to 350,000mL. These solutions or we call them reagents, are used together to make test kits for different diseases, which are designed to be used by large analysers, which are typically used by hospital laboratories. The tests work by telling you if you have or have not got the marker in your blood for a particular disease, or if you have too much or too little of something in your body which is making your body not function the way it should. Most of our kits work as a group, and it would be the results of all the tests together which would help the doctor work out what was going on inside your body.
    Once the reagents are made they also require to be tested before they can be sent to the hospitals. So sometimes when I am in the lab I am helping with the testing stage rather than the making stage. We need to test them just like a customer would use them so that any medical decisions made to give a patient medication or an operation are the right ones.