Quote From iwan:
Can any bio science researchers here share how many months/years it took them before they got a 'breakthrough' that would more or less set the direction for the entire course of their PhD?
What's a breakthrough? Ah, you mean that elusive thing all scientists spend their waking days trying to find? That Eureka moment? It doesn't exist. It's a myth. A PhD thesis is often just a collection of random experiments that might eventually link together to suggest that a hypothesis is correct or incorrect. It's highly unlikely this hypothesis is going to be very novel or interesting. Maybe after many years of collaborative research you'll realise you've found something that changes the understanding of something big, but by then it will have been so many years coming it won't feel like much of a breakthrough...
Don't stress yourself out at this stage - all the small experiments you are doing will lead to something, even if it's just what not to do. A PhD is training experience after all - that's why you're called a student.
P.S. If you must know, my thesis had three data chapters (all subsequently papers): chapter 1 - I got the main result in my first year, but then spent the next three years doing more experiments to collect more data, chapter 2 - I got the main result right at the end of my third year, chapter 3 - I got the only result in my so-called writing up year.
