Open the freezer in the laboratory across the hall from Annabelle Rodriguez’s office at the University of Connecticut Health Center, and you will find rows of miniature fluid-filled vials, many of them holding tiny strands of DNA. For the past 13 years, Rodriguez, a physician-scientist in the university’s Center for Vascular Biology, has kept her eye on one particular gene in those DNA strands that is integral to the function of high-density lipoproteins (HDL). Rodriguez’s research suggests that HDL, what’s called the “good” cholesterol, may not be so good for everyone.