Dry lab

A dry lab is a laboratory where the nature of the experiments does not involve significant risk. This is in contrast to a wet lab where it is necessary to handle various types of chemicals and biological hazards. An example of a dry lab is one where computational or applied mathematical analyses are done on a computer-generated model to simulate a phenomenon in the physical realm.^[1] Examples of such phenomena include a molecule changing quantum states, the event horizon of a black hole or anything that otherwise might be impossible or too dangerous to observe under normal laboratory conditions. This term may also refer to a lab that uses primarily electronic equipment, for example, a robotics lab. A dry lab can also refer to a laboratory space for the storage of dry materials.^[2]

Dry labbing can also refer to falsifying results in breach of the scientific method, or carrying out a systematic review.

As computing power has grown exponentially this approach to research, often referred to as in silico (as opposed to in vitro and in vivo), has amassed more attention, especially in the area of bioinformatics. More specifically, within bioinformatics, is the study of proteins or proteomics, which is the elucidation of their unknown structures and folding patterns. The general approach in the elucidation of protein structure has been to first purify a protein, crystallize it and then send X-rays through such a purified protein crystal to observe how these x-rays diffract into specific pattern—a process referred to as X-ray crystallography. However, many proteins, especially those embedded in cellular membranes, are nearly impossible to crystallize due to their hydrophobic nature. Although other techniques exists, such as ramachandran plotting and mass spectrometry, these alone generally do not lead to the full elucidation of protein structure or folding mechanisms.

As a means of surpassing the limitations of these techniques, projects such as

There are many other avenues of research in which the dry lab approach has been implemented. Other physical phenomena, such as sound, properties of newly discovered or hypothetical compounds and quantum mechanics models have recently^[when?] received more attention in this area of approach.

• Computational chemistry
• Computational science
• Computer simulation
• Computational physics
• In silico
• Protein structure prediction
• Wet lab