Last year, Maria Tun was in the audience at Hancock College's Bridges to the Baccalaureate Fall Symposium watching fellow students present their summer research projects. On Friday, she was explaining her participation in a Cal Poly gene research program.

The 20-year-old Tun worked Sandra Clement, an assistant professor in Cal Poly's Biological Sciences Department, on "post-transcriptional and post-translational regulation of gene expression by cell signaling pathways in mammalian cells." That is an accurate, but extensively technical description of research that scientists hope will one day eliminate diseases and birth defects.

"It was mainly focused on genetics. Basically they just want to regulate protein levels so that they create different functions of different genes at different times," said Tun, a 2012 graduate of Pioneer Valley High School, sounding very much like a seasoned research assistant. "The first step is to regulate a gene. Once youre able to regulate a gene, that goes back regulating protein levels that regulates a gene. Eventually through more research it'll lead to regulating any type of gene, so you could stop cancerous genes before they start."

The two-and-a-half month summer program allowed Tun to work with Clement's research team at Cal Poly. It not only opened her eyes to genetic research, it most likely was the first step in what she wants to be a career in genetics research.

"Obviously I wanted to do something in the science department, but after doing the genetics program with Bridges, thats where I'm focused," she said, adding her ultimate goal would be to join Clement's team at Cal Poly.

The University of California, Irvine is another possibility, she said.

The Bridges to the Baccalaureate program is a partnership between Cal Poly and Hancock College designed to give underrepresented minority students a chance to pursue careers in the biomedical or behavioral sciences.

This summer, Tun was one 13 Bridges students who had paid research internships at Cal Poly. Over the past five years, 65 Hancock students have been accepted into the program and 40 of them have transferred to four-year universities, including Cal Poly.

Len Miyahara, who wrote the grant that started the program and now serves as its director, said budget cuts have curtailed the program in recent years. When it started, Hancock College was one of eight such programs in the country. Miyahara said it is now one of three.

Last month, the National Institutes of Health Division of Minority Opportunities in Research awarded a five-year $966,000 grant to extend the program.

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Hancock College program spans education gap

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