Friday, April 27, 2012

Working: More recent research shows labs are convivial places

Scientists are not only social - judging from all the weekend parties, working lunches and dinner celebrations one busy lab puts together - but lab work requires an enormous amount of collaboration and communication. Zechiedrich is a professor in the department of molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor and specializes in DNA structures. Zechiedrich is a flutist and sits next to the principal oboist, a registered nurse at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, who mentioned that U.S. solders were returning from Afghanistan with hard-to-fight bacteria infections from contaminated dirt on shrapnel. Another conversation, with a Baylor computer scientist and fellow foodie, pushed Zechiedrich to think about sequencing strains of drug-resistant bacteria in Houston-area patients. Any specialty has its own shorthand, and it wasn't easy for the scientists to keep jargon at bay, but some of them brought out old-fashioned phone cords and colored ropes to explain the super- coiling features of DNA.

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