PATRICIA A. LINLEY

linley@hboi.edu

Research Specialist - Cell Biology Program
Division of Biomedical Marine Research (DBMR)
Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution

Pat has worked at HBOI for over 31 years, the last 13 in the Cell Biology Program of DBMR. Her previous position was in the Division of Marine Science as Manager of the Histology Lab and Assistant Manager of the Electron Microscopy Facility. She majored in Biology at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, FL and did several summer internships at Chesapeake Biological Lab in Solomons, MD that channeled her into histological investigations of marine life. Pat is the primary cell culturist for the division, growing human and murine cancer cells. Growing cells requires knowledge, good observation capabilities, sterile techniques and patience. She uses these cells to do % activity screening of crude marine extracts and IC-50 cytotoxicity assays for the intermediate partitions and pure compounds derived by the division chemists from marine macro- and micro- organisms. Running assays with different cancer cells that have different culture requirements and different growth cycles requires an ability to multi-task and to be very organized so that the cells are ready for the maximum number of assays that can be run each week. Although the work can be repetitious, Pat still gets excited when an assay is completed because she is the first person to see if the compounds are exhibiting biological activity against the cancer cells - by inhibition of growth or outright killing. She also does mechanism-of-action studies on the pure compounds involving antibody staining of microtubules using confocal microscopy and cell cycle analysis using flow cytometry.