According to the American Heart Association (2012), about 30% of adults in the United States has hypertension, which is a major risk factor for myocardial infarction (MI), or a heart attack. The Dahl Salt Sensitive (SS) rat is a salt induced hypertensive rat model that also is susceptible to ischemia/reperfusion injury (IR), stroke, and end organ damage. Previous studies found that SS hearts are susceptible to global IR injury, whereas hearts from Brown Norway (BN) and SS-2BN consomic strains (an SS rat with chromosome 2 from the BN rat), are significantly protected. Interestingly, the SS-2BN strain is also protected from salt induced hypertension, suggesting a gene(s) on chromosome 2 are involved in hypertension and MI. To follow up these findings, we generated five congenic strains derived from the SS-2BN to identify the genetic factors that play a role in IR injury and hypertension. One congenic strain retains protection against both IR injury and hypertension. This region contains a gene, Ddah1, which is significantly upregulated in the hearts of SS rats compared to SS-2BN, suggesting the potential for allele-specific transcriptional regulation. We have measured, by qPCR, Ddah1 mRNA levels in hearts and kidneys from the congenic strains. Our data suggests the expression of Ddah1 is regulated in a tissue specific manner, but not necessarily due to allelic variation between SS and BN rats. The SS-2BN strain offers a powerful model for identifying the genes and for studying the mechanism of MI in the SS strain, independent from many of its risk factors. "