Born in Houston, Texas, Lynn Zechiedrich’s early life was steeped in scientific experimentation. Her father, a physicist, often immersed her in scientific experimentation from a very young age. In fact, her first encounter with science occurred when she was a newborn. “I had a bad cold and dad thought he smelled acetone on my breath. He sped me, not to the doctor’s office, but to his workplace, Petro-Tex Chemical Corporation, to have me breathe through the tube of a new gas chromatograph he had just built. Sure enough, my breath contained an acetone peak!” She jokes, “Luckily, I survived both the infection and the experimentation, but I think that gives you an idea of what my life was like growing up.”

Zechiedrich fondly recalls her childhood as a constant exper­iment and exploration. Her mom was a professor of Spanish who did research on deciphering ancient text. Her mom took her all over Mexico exploring ancient ruins and languages. She and her father would take apart cars, radios, and even ears of corn to understand how things worked. “We built what­ever was needed for whatever job,” she says, describing how they’d find solutions to everyday problems, like using alumi­num foil and a low-voltage cathode ray tube to keep the dog out of the trash or building an underground house to save on energy bills. “It was all about solving problems,” she adds.

Zechiedrich’s higher education journey began with a music scholarship to the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. “This is such an important lesson for parents,” she shares. “Yes, there are athletic scholarships, but there are far more band scholarships!” She took science and math courses, embracing her interests while figuring out where she wanted to focus. “I loved physics, but there were no girls there and that felt odd,” she explains. “My introductory biochemistry class brought together all my favorite subjects and that is what I decided to do with my life.”

At the time, biochemistry was not yet offered as a major, so she pursued a bachelor’s in zoology with minors in math and music. Her decision to pursue biochemistry took her to Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where she earned her PhD in biochemistry. The first PhD graduate student of Neil Osheroff, she was captivated by topoisomerases and DNA supercoiling, a passion that still burns within her today. In her second year of graduate school, she heard a talk by Nick Cozzarelli at a Keystone Symposium, which led her to pursue postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley in his lab. Cozzarelli’s work, which combined biophysics and mathematics to study DNA recombination and other DNA-re­lated activities, was an ideal match for her research goals. Zechiedrich’s graduate and postdoctoral experience would become foundational to her later work in DNA research, par­ticularly in understanding the mechanics of DNA topoisom­erases—enzymes that play a crucial role in DNA replication, transcription, and repair.

Now a professor at Baylor College of Medicine, Zechiedrich’s research focuses on understanding how DNA mechanics influence the proteins and enzymes that act on DNA. “We’re having a great time in the lab using what we learned over the last several years about DNA supercoiling to ‘capture’ and study my favorite enzymes, the DNA topoisomerases, as well as other important DNA-binding proteins and DNA-acting enzymes. Results with supercoiled DNA are vastly different from those with linear duplex DNA!” she reports.

“What I love about biophysics is that it continues to open doors to new details of biological questions,” Zechiedrich re­veals. Her lab’s work continues to shed light on the mechanics of DNA and its interactions with various enzymes, furthering our understanding of the molecular machinery of life.

Zechiedrich’s career has not been without its challenges. One of the most difficult moments came when a renewal proposal for a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant received two nearly perfect scores and one poor review, leading her to narrowly miss the funding payline. Rather than accepting the outcome, she appealed the review, only to face an unsatisfac­tory response. “Council came back with ‘that was his opinion,’ which was a non-answer,” she recalls. “But I didn’t give up.” Despite the setback, Zechiedrich continued to push forward and applied for alternative funding. “I just didn’t quit. I sub­mitted new proposals until I was funded again,” she reflects, crediting her perseverance and community support as key to overcoming adversity.

Her persistence paid off. Baylor College of Medicine’s program for funding researchers with near-fundable scores provided support for her lab, and she was able to continue her research without having to lay off any of her team. She learned a few valuable lessons amidst this difficult experience. “Never put all your eggs in one basket,” she recommends, emphasizing the importance of diversifying research funding sources. “Diversify your funding. I had saved everything going on in my lab for one large NIH grant, but when that one grant wasn’t funded, I was in big trouble. Lean on your mentors and friends. My being open and honest with my struggle allowed people to step up to help, which meant I didn’t end up quit­ting.”

Perhaps most importantly, she learned not to let unsubstan­tiated criticism get to her. “It’s just one guy’s ‘opinion.’ Find any grain of truth in the review and let the rest go because it’s not personal and reviewers are just flawed humans. This last point is so important because part of the lack of diversity in science is a consequence of harsh reviews leading to people quitting.”

For Zechiedrich, one of the most rewarding aspects of her work is seeing the success of her trainees. She finds immense joy in the “anticipatory and excited feeling” of witnessing the moment when new results are first uncovered—an emo­tion that she says remains just as exhilarating as it was for her very first experiment. “That moment when you see the results for the first time—it’s the best feeling. It’s the same as it was when I first started and must have been how my dad felt when he identified that acetone peak in his baby daughter’s breath,” she shares. In addition to her research, Zechiedrich co-directs the graduate program in Quantitative & Computational Biosciences at Baylor, where she mentors the next generation of scientists. “Generating new ideas, getting new results, and the successes of my trainees—that’s what keeps me going,” she confides.

Looking ahead, Zechiedrich anticipates that the future of biophysics will be marked by advances in sensitivity and improvements in signal-to-noise ratios in experiments. “I aim to provide mechanistic information about DNA and DNA-act­ing proteins that bridges the gap between static atomic level information and the reality of the wondrous organized chaos of living cells,” she declares.

In her spare time, Zechiedrich finds joy in exploring new places, spending time with family and friends, and engaging in creative outlets such as photography and playing flute and piccolo in the Texas Medical Center Orchestra (catch their performances on YouTube!). When asked what she would do if she weren’t a biophysicist, she replies, “I’d be playing piccolo for Warner Bros. Animation.”

Zechiedrich’s advice for young scientists starting their careers in biophysics is straightforward: “Be bold, follow your passion, and don’t forget to have fun.” She adds, “Life is a journey, and my journey has been filled with ‘I wish my younger self knew that’ moments.” Some of her biggest lessons learned have been: “Ask for what you need. Your boss/chair wants you to succeed, but they cannot know how to help unless you ask. Be proactive about what you wish to be involved in and what is not your best use of time. You are you and your pathway is yours, so don’t compare yourself to others and help your colleagues and trainees to do the same.”

As a member of the Biophysical Society, Zechiedrich has found the organization’s resources, events, and community to be invaluable to her career. “The people are supportive, brilliant, and give me new ideas,” she notes, highlighting the importance of collaboration and connection in scientific work. “Studying DNA structure/function is a field that fits every­where yet nowhere exactly. So, after years of not quite fitting, I feel I fit well at BPS. The people I have met through BPS are world class. I take a bit of each talk and each person back with me to the lab and there is no doubt my science advances because of it.”