DNA-repair.
Ann Ganesan is a Senior Research Associate, and her responsibilities are varied. Some are very routine while others are not.
As an example of the routine chores, she takes care of the laboratory culture collections, including various plasmids,
bacterial strains and mammalian cell lines. This involves bookkeeping (to keep track of the cultures and make sure we
have records describing them accurately) and freezing the cultures so they can be stored for long periods of time without
losing viability or changing their genetic characteristics. As an example of her less routine activities, she investigates
the aspect of DNA-repair.
The primary research interest of the laboratory in which she works is DNA repair. That means that they try to understand how cells maintain the integrity of their genetic information. This involves reading literature to try to keep up with what is going on in this area of research. It also involves designing and performing experiments to try to answer specific questions about DNA repair. In addition, she makes recommendations to graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in the laboratory about the design and execution of experiments (not that they necessarily follow her recommendations). Sometimes she supervises undergraduate students working on honors projects in this laboratory. Sometimes Ann attends scientific meetings to find out what is new in her area of research, and presents the results of her experiments.
