NewRoFoundation

Rachel Rivera searched for and identified a gene associated with hypertension that is present in a specific cancer treatment sample.

But it wasn’t easy.

In a project that addressed what are historically the two most frequent killers in the United States – heart disease and cancer – Rivera sifted through data night and day. Days stretching 10 hours or more added up to 320 hours throughout July.

The problem, which is a global issue, is that treatments for cancer can cause hypertension, and from there, heart ailments. Rivera found plenty of research about the impacts of diet and smoking on hypertension, but she came across little on genetics.

When hypertension develops, it is treated with more medications.

“If we can find what gene is causing it and we can turn it off, then we don’t have to worry about the medication,” she said.

To conduct her search, Rivera developed her own procedure with “a lot of very tedious coding.” This helped mine data she needed from complex bioinformatics platforms on experiments with cancerous mice. She was able to identify a specific gene, c-fos, associated with hypertension in the mice.

She plans to continue the research in college. One avenue is to harness a type of RNA – which converts DNA’s codes into proteins – that replicates the gene and binds to it, interrupting its functions.

Her project was arduous, but it paid off.

“I was getting a little worried because I didn’t know if I was going to find anything,” she said. “But it was worth it in the end.”