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Payton
Student
Trenton, Michigan
1
Question
Updated
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What can I expect to do on a daily basis with a career in genetic engineering?
Such as tasks, types of reports, what you could work on (human, animal, plant genetics), what hours are like, etc.
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1 answer
Joseph Neilson
Radiation Detection Physicist
244
Answers
Oxford, England, United Kingdom
Updated
Joseph’s Answer
Genetic engineering is applicable to several different roles and career paths, and the exact tasks will vary between them. You could follow genetics into an academic research career; into more clinically oriented paths such as gene therapy, or gene-targeted pharmaceutical development for "personalised medicine"; or you could go more industrial, into agricultural GM or food science.
The tasks vary, but while it's not my area to know exactly how the tasks go, I'd still guess there's a lot of commonality - many of these pathways will involve a combination of desk-based research, calculations, and documentation tasks, alongside some more practical laboratory work. Over the last few years, the CRISPR technique has made a lot of big news stories in this sort of area, so I imagine you'd be working on things like that.
Hours can vary, but a lot of roles in this field will run a normal Mon-Fri 9-5 workweek as the default expectation. There may be some places that need to run closer to 24-7 and therefore use weekend or shift-work, but I imagine that's rare. Also, depending on the organisation (not all are as good as others), many of these sorts of science roles tend to have relatively open and flexible cultures, so you'll often find there's some flexibility over working hours, hybrid working where the task allows, and so on - as long as you're getting the work done.
The tasks vary, but while it's not my area to know exactly how the tasks go, I'd still guess there's a lot of commonality - many of these pathways will involve a combination of desk-based research, calculations, and documentation tasks, alongside some more practical laboratory work. Over the last few years, the CRISPR technique has made a lot of big news stories in this sort of area, so I imagine you'd be working on things like that.
Hours can vary, but a lot of roles in this field will run a normal Mon-Fri 9-5 workweek as the default expectation. There may be some places that need to run closer to 24-7 and therefore use weekend or shift-work, but I imagine that's rare. Also, depending on the organisation (not all are as good as others), many of these sorts of science roles tend to have relatively open and flexible cultures, so you'll often find there's some flexibility over working hours, hybrid working where the task allows, and so on - as long as you're getting the work done.