Hughes Mentor:  Patricia Cassano

Department: Nutritional Sciences

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A Day in the Life of an Undergraduate

In high school, I was given the opportunity to research the genetic basis of hypertension in West Africans. When I entered college, I wanted to do similar research looking at genetic association with disease. One day in NS 115, my TA described his research and it seemed right up my alley! He looked at certain polymorphisms and their relationship with cardiovascular disease. I summoned the courage to approach the graduate student after class. I talked to him about my research interests and he told me that I should meet with his professor, Dr. Cassano. I set up a meeting with Dr. Cassano, and discussed my previous research experience with her. While my high school research was more laboratory based, the research that goes on in the Cassano group is more computational biology oriented.

I am currently working on a project concerning the association of genetic variants in folate metabolic genes with incidence of colorectal cancer. In our research group, we work with secondary data sets. We examine the Normative Aging Study population, which is a longitudinal study started in 1963 by the Veterans Administration consisting of 2280 men. During this summer, I worked on a more specific part of the project concerning confounding factors that can interfere with the genotype disease association.

This research is primary done using SAS statistical software, so it involves some programming knowledge. This research also requires statistical background. I took the BTRY 301 and BTRY 302 courses to provide background knowledge for the statistical methods involved in my research project. The BTRY 301 class provides a basic statistical background, where BTRY 302 delves into more involved statistics including linear and logistic regression. There are many workshops provided by CISER, the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research. These workshops show researchers how to use various statistical programs as well as how to perform certain statistical techniques within programs.

Working in Dr. Cassano’s group has allowed me to learn how to do hands on research. I have gained a great deal of knowledge and experience from carrying out research in her group that I would not be able to learn from textbooks and classes.

My summer in the Cassano group has been exciting and busy. I have been able to get a lot done in such a short amount of time because there were no classes. Researching during the summer is very different than researching during the academic year. During the summer, you devote your full time to research during the day and in the evening you have time to yourself. During the semester, you have to integrate research time in with your class schedule. There is no fixed schedule where you work and have free time. It is a good idea to devote time to research as if it were a class and block off time in your schedule to focus on your research. It is easy to get overwhelmed by classes and research, but if you organize your schedule and follow it throughout the semester, you should not have a problem balancing research with classes.

The Cassano Research Group: A Day in the Life

When many people think of research at a university like Cornell, their minds are filled with images of lab coats, jars of chemicals, and rooms filled with expensive and highly technical equipment. However, there are many different types of research and many different environments in which to pursue it. Working in the lab of Dr. Patricia Cassano many not expose me to many intricate laboratory techniques, but it has given me the opportunity to work in an exciting area of research and analysis that interacts constantly with the scientific community both within and outside of Savage Hall.

The specific field in which we work is that of epidemiology, the study of disease incidence and progression in populations. In particular the Cassano lab focuses on the epidemiology of chronic disease and the role nutrition plays in its development. To this end there are two main projects being run currently in the lab. One project focuses on the role of folate metabolism in cancer, while the other concerns the possible preventative role for antioxidant nutrients such as vitamin E and selenium in the development of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). This latter project, the Respiratory Ancillary Study (RAS) to the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Trial (SELECT), is the one in which I am involved on both an operational and an investigative level. On the one hand, I help provide supplies for the 16 remote sites that collect data from our study subjects in the form of spirometry tests, blood, and urine samples. I also help to process the urine samples when our laboratory tech is unavailable, which involves aliquoting them into 2 ml tubes and storing them in a -80o C freezer in the Human Metabolic Research Unit in Martha Van Rensselaer Hall until they can be analyzed for F-2-isoprostane, a biomarker of oxidative stress. On most days, however, the large majority of my time is spent in our office in Savage Hall reading relevant literature or using SAS software to do computational analyses. These analyses often involve trying to answer statistical questions about different parts of the RAS data, such as if a correlation exists between the lung function measurements and supplementation statuses of subjects diagnosed with COPD. This information is not only a key to the results of our study, but could potentially have a larger impact on the clinical treatment of COPD in the U.S. and world populations.

It is these larger implications that fascinate me and are what initially drew me to this lab. The field of epidemiology and the idea of being a “disease detective” have interested me since middle school, so I was instantly curious when I read a description of Dr. Cassano’s research in the files at the Office of Undergraduate Biology. I e-mailed her immediately, and after a few exchanges and a couple meetings, I was diving headfirst into the world of epidemiological research. This is not an exaggeration – within a week of starting I had already read much of the background for the RAS and was given my first analysis project, which was to characterize and determine any significant trends in the levels of creatinine (a biomarker of dilution) in the RAS urine samples. This may sound intimidating, but for anyone who thrives on a challenge, the task certainly presented an interesting one.

In general, working in the Cassano lab group has challenged me in ways different than my academics, and allowed me to pursue an area of interest in which few classes are offered. It has also given me the opportunity to work with an engaging group of people who are not only my intellectual guides and colleagues, but also my friends. For anyone interested in the field of epidemiology or chronic disease and nutrition, Dr. Cassano’s lab is a great opportunity to explore an international area of research with a supportive group of people outside the walls of a wet laboratory.

Reflection after speaking with Pat Cassano

I’m certainly clear on what I do on a daily basis: I grind up rice grains, extract the inulin with boiling water, and then quantify it in a color reaction. In fact, I’m so focused on my project that it’s difficult to remember what questions other researchers are asking and how they are going about finding the answers. So, on a recent afternoon, I turned off my spectrophotometer and sat down with Pat Cassano, a professor of epidemiology in the Department of Nutrition. I hoped to understand how her research differed from my bench work, as well as her formative experiences as a young person.

Pat immediately picked up on my question when I asked her, “So what is it that you do?” First, she explained how my research process might look so she could contrast it with her own. She painted a picture of biology research in which a researcher starts from scratch and designs an experiment to answer one or two questions. For example, I asked, “How much inulin is in the rice grain?” I analyzed my rice flour and didn’t take much care to save the flour for another experiment, another question, another sidetrack. In contrast, Pat pointed out a well-known study that has tracked a large cohort of nurses since 1976. Of course, the study originally intended to answer one or questions, but when a cohort is well-tracked and the data is in available in the public domain, the possibilities are endless – it’s like saving my rice flour in the -80 C freezer so I can use it later. Pat told me that she recently analyzed background information and blood samples from the nurses study to answer her own question about an enzyme involved in folate metabolism. In this way, she didn’t start her experiment at the beginning – she didn’t go find her own subjects – but instead funneled information from an established project and still contributed a meaningful and independent finding. Sounds efficient!

I also learned about meta-analysis, another approach in epidemiological research. A meta-analysis pulls together data from numerous studies and takes them all into account to generate a public health recommendation. For example, one of Pat’s studies from the early nineties is now being included in a meta-analysis to make a conclusion on risk factors and markers for lung disease. In this way, older and varied studies are valued, rather than left to collect dust in the library. Also, biological studies are funneled towards applicable recommendations. Pat envisions her place in biological research, but also wants to make sure that public health workers understand and apply her work. I notice this same concept in plant breeding – for example, there are searchable public databases that gather and organize data on molecular markers, mutations, and taxonomy, all coming from different papers.

Anther striking difference in Pat’s research is the community in which she works. Pat is an epidemiologist and so in a school of public health she would be surrounded by other epidemiologists. Their diversity would be in the disease they studied, in the outcome and impact they measured. In her department, the diversity actually comes with the training and background of the researchers – some are working from a biological angle, others at an anthropological or social science angle, and still others from an economic angle. This seems like a unique place to be, where one field takes on many different meanings to many different researchers.

As well as learning how Pat’s research differed from mine, I also wanted to hear about her formation as a scientist. What experiences guided her academic path? Surprisingly, Pat started her story after college, at her first job as a research assistant. Wow! I was so grateful Pat had challenged the idea that students have only one chance in college to explore their interests and after that, their time’s up. She explained that everyone individuates at different times in life and for different reasons. She told me that she found herself “sheltered” in college, and it was “enough for her to distance herself from her parents just a little bit.” After college, she individuated even more completely, exploring her interests and talents. Her first job as a research assistant was incredibly valuable. First, she found a natural talent for research – she enjoyed and easily navigated the puzzle pieces and problem solving of research. However, she was not so fond of the basic science research and desired to work towards a practical application. Finally, while she had plenty of responsibility at her job, she realized that she preferred to be the director. She wanted to be asking the questions and managing the work effort. When there’s a pressure to find the answers to my life’s direction, it was refreshing to be reminded that life opens up gradually.

To top it off, I found myself interested in one of Pat’s research questions: Do different people respond differently to different micronutrients? I think I’ll be back to ask her how she designs an experiment to answer that question.