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If you’ve already started looking into research programs or internships, then you’ve probably seen the terms “wet lab” and “dry lab.” What exactly does it mean, though, for a lab to be wet or dry? For someone who has never been in a laboratory setting before, these terms might seem a little strange, but they’re actually simpler than you might think!
What is a Wet Lab?
Wet labs are “wet” for a reason: they’re an environment where a researcher might be manipulating liquids, using biological materials (like mice), or running physical experiments. When most people think of scientific research, they’re often thinking of a wet lab, where there are flasks lying about and centrifuges being put to use. Therefore, if you’re pipetting samples, growing bacterial cultures, or working with any kind of living organism or chemical — you’re in a wet lab.
The work in a wet lab tends to be hands-on. Those who work in a wet lab normally call their research satisfying because there will almost always be a tangible result (a colored band on a gel, a culture growing, a reaction occurring). But wet lab work also requires incredible patience and a high tolerance for things not going your way. Dealing with biological and chemical matter is a process that has many twists and turns. More often than not, even the smallest mistakes can result in a ‘failed’ experiment (like pipetting one extra milliliter of solution). Working in a wet lab, therefore, requires an intense level of precision.
Another key distinction between wet labs and dry labs is the infrastructure involved. Wet labs require more physical infrastructure to ensure safety and to carry out a wide range of experiments. A few pieces of equipment include:
Fume Hoods: These are necessary for removing toxic fumes and vapors from the lab air so that harmful substances do not affect lab workers.
Sinks and Drainage: Wet labs often include sinks for handling liquids and drainage systems for safe disposal of chemicals.
Chemical Storage: Secure storage areas are necessary for chemicals, making sure they are kept safely and organized for use during experiments.
What is a Dry Lab?
On the other hand, dry labs are entirely computational. Instead of running physical experiments, you’re conducting computational and mathematical analyses of data. Rather than using beakers and pipettes, the primary tools in a dry lab setting are electronic equipment like computers and other digital devices.
Dry lab research is more common in fields like bioinformatics, computational biology, data science, epidemiology, astrophysics, and theoretical physics. A dry lab researcher might analyze genomic datasets to identify patterns linked to disease, model the spread of an infectious virus, simulate the behavior of a black hole, or build a machine learning tool to classify cancer images.
The work often requires competency with programming languages (Python and Rare the most common in biology-adjacent fields), statistical reasoning, and long hours of debugging code that isn't cooperating. But since dry labs don’t require all of the physical infrastructure present in a wet lab, the job is much more flexible. Technically, you can do dry lab research from anywhere as long as you have a laptop and internet connection.
Which One is Right for You?
If you enjoy hands-on work and don’t mind the messiness and unpredictability of working with biological materials, then a wet lab might be a better fit. If you’re drawn to math, enjoy problem-solving through logic and code, and prefer working independently on a computer, then a dry lab might suit you better.
What matters most isn’t how ‘cool’ the work is, but how drawn you are to the questions being asked.
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