...How do you feel about pipetting?

[okemba]

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Instead of the usual "Will I get in? How is it? What can I do afterwards?" 's that comprise my usual leechings, I wanted to take some time to ask a lower-level research question.

...How do you feel about pipetting?

I've been working in wet-lab heavy research labs for almost 3 years. At first it was pure wet, then I switched over into a wet/silico mix. Which I much prefer. But it had been my presumption that sane, reasonable people avoid fields where thousands of hours throughout the course of a PhD must be spent doing mundane and repetitive tasks. Fields such as the one I found myself in.

Yet I persisted, in hopes that it would yield publications and enhance the chances of me getting into MD/PhD programs. Whatever. Onwards.

I tell my friends in more cognitively effortful fields (EE/CS, math, physics, etc.) about how terribly repetitive most biological research is, and they respond that a lot of their work is mundane and repetitive as well, but when I actually look at what they do on a daily basis.... I realize biological drudgery is of a completely different order. They have it much better.

So I thought I would put this question to the sane, reasonable inhabits of SDN/MDPhD. What level of wet-work/dry(silico)-work are you comfortable with?

This has been bugging me recently. Because I feel like intellectually, and culturally... I HATE PIPETTING I fit in 10x better with the EE/CS/math/physics (but not MechEs) people than I do with the pre-med/biology/BME people. BUT I really want to do biomedical research, and so I'm trying to fuse these two interests. I had considered an EE/CS PhD as part of an MD/PhD, but uh...eh? I guess it's plausible if I busted my ass and was willing to take 9-10 years. (...even if I am now, I probably wouldn't be okay 15 years down the road.)

I really want to work in neuroprosthetics. Its just that integrating that into an MD/PhD in a reasonable timeframe with my current biological (+ minor computational modeling) skills is non-trivial.

Basically, I am considering:

MD/PhD with PhD a split between bioinformatics and wet-lab genetics then going into medical genetics, and... maybe riding personalized medicine into the future?

Or MD/PhD with a PhD more electrical/hardware based so I have a good foundation for neuroprosthetics, then going into neurology (why neurology for neuroprosthetics? I don't know. I didn't think it through.)

I reallllly don't want to pipette things for the rest of my life. (Though I of course realize a genetics PhD would require it.)

 

[cpi89]

I personally love working with my hands. I don't mind the repetitive nature, though I don't necessarily consider my work to be repetitive. It's only as repetitive as the number of replicates I might need for a particular experiment. The techniques might carry over from day to day, but each experiment has a different "story" so to speak.

I know lots of people that would agree with you though, even a few wet lab post-docs. Thank goodness we aren't all interested in the exact same things or science would probably be doomed.

 

[QofQuimica]

Sounds like you should reconsider your choice of PhD field. All of science involves a lot of elbow grease, including theoretical projects. If you're not interested enough in what you do to at least tolerate if not enjoy the daily grind required to get there, then you should probably do something else. Why shouldn't you do computer modeling if that's what you enjoy? At least give it a try and see. Now's the time to explore your options, not when you're halfway through a genetics PhD program that you hate.

 

[regeneration]

The interests you describe fit pretty well into the broad field of BME (neuroprosthetics, EECS with biomedical focus, device/wet lab/dry lab mix, bioinformatics & personalized medicine) and is definitely feasible in an MD/PhD, although BMEers are underrepresented on this forum and in some MSTP programs. If this is what interests you, definitely explore it more -- there are many fantastic ways in which BME can interface with medicine (and that don't ever require pipettes, or even wetlab depending on your interests). As you correctly stated, you probably will have to spend more time than normal during your training taking engineering classes/learning technical skills, but don't let this dissuade you if engineering research interests you.

In terms of "repetition": engineering research can still require repetition depending on the analysis technique (e.g. imaging); if you pursue a more translational/engineering design oriented project (e.g. device development), you will encounter less repetition. It is reasonable to think that repeated image acquisition, biomechanical tests, etc. is less monotonous/repetitive than repeated pipetting in your experiments, since you usually work on a more macro-scale and can see what's going on, but do understand that there will be some repetition no matter what you do.

Both the choices you propose are great, and can perhaps even be combined.

- From a BMEer

 

[bd4727]

I did a PhD in computational genetics and never did any wet lab work (unless I wanted to). PM me...

 

[okemba]

Thank goodness we aren't all interested in the exact same things or science would probably be doomed.

I started feeling this way recently. There's really no 'optimal' human being. Our society would collapse without intellectual diversity.

Sounds like you should reconsider your choice of PhD field.

Quite so. I have thoroughly enjoyed the computational biology work that I have done. But I have this very strong feeling that pure computational people are usually not as well qualified to rigorously assess experimental design and the quality of the data inputs to their model. This is what most of the dry-lab graduate students tell me.

In addition... I'm not sure. I think real advances in biology will come from methods development, both from inside and outside biology:

Optogenetics, PCR, Western Blot vs. Mass Spec, and RNASeq.

How many PCR-impact methods are out there just waiting to be tapped?

...although BMEers are underrepresented on this forum and in some MSTP programs...

This initially surprised me, but as a BME major, I suppose it comes as no surprise that my perceptions suffer some sampling bias and that every MD/PhD I know is BME... lol.

It is reasonable to think that repeated image acquisition, biomechanical tests, etc. is less monotonous/repetitive than repeated pipetting in your experiments, since you usually work on a more macro-scale and can see what's going on, but do understand that there will be some repetition no matter what you do.

Oh, I completely agree. But certain fields have much less, and there's where I'd like to be. I spent a summer working on a device design project and it was phenomenal. No coming in at midnight for timecourses, no coming in on weekends to thymidine-block cells, drastically shorter hours, generally stimulating work... really phenomenal.

The problem I see with device design, which is what I see with virtually all research is... the first graduate student (and their PI) to invent/create the technology gets 90% of the credit, and then the PI has 5-6 subsequent grad students working on incremental improvements to the technology, or just proof-of-principle'ing it in different situations.

I see this everywhere. As one example, I joined what I assumed to be a device lab, then discovered that 70% of the lab was neither designing nor building new devices, and were instead all working with (not on) a single previous device.

This of course happens in wet-lab too. Think optogenetics. Inventing optogenetics is one thing. Being one of the later hordes of people to use optogenetics to explore neural circuitry is quite another. Both are necessary, of course.

My interests keep changing. I used to think I would be very interested in wet-lab methods development, and I am (because it is so necessary...), but the problem with methods development is that it can be very black-and-white. If you're using previously existing assays to measure signalling pathways in cells, then in most biological fields you can make incremental progress.

But its completely possible to spend a year or two in methods development and have no real incremental progress to show...

I did a PhD in computational genetics and never did any wet lab work (unless I wanted to). PM me...

My noodly appendage probes your inbox.


Also I will admit, it wasn't until 2013 that I actually understood the value of most wet-lab research. This protein gets phosphorylated, dephosphorylating two others, and upregulating 7 others.

.....who cares? I'll run the western, but I didn't care at all.

But now it makes sense to me.