SHIRLEY A. POMPONI, Ph.D.

pomponi@hboi.edu

(University of Miami, 1977 - Biological Oceanography)

Dr. Pomponi leads the Marine Invertebrate Cell Culture Program. A major emphasis of her research is on the development of methods for sustainable use of marine resources for drug discovery and development. Research is focused on establishing cell lines of marine sponges that can be used as models to study production of sponge-derived bioactive metabolites and the factors which control expression of production.

Listen to Dr. Pomponi's lecture at the 2001 Ocean Science Lecture Series (requires Flash 4).

Selected Publications:

Willoughby, R.; Pomponi, S.A. (2000). Quantitative assessment of marine sponge cells in vitro: development of improved growth medium. In Vitro Cell. Devel. Biol. (Animal), 36:194-200.

Pomponi, S.A. 1999. The bioprocess-technological potential of the sea. J. Biotechnology, 70: 5-13. Andrade, P., R. Willoughby, S.A. Pomponi, and R.G. Kerr. 1999. Biosynthetic studies of the alkaloid, stevensine, in a cell culture of the marine sponge Teichaxinella morchella. Tetrahedron Letters 40: 4775-4778.

Pomponi, S.A., R. Willoughby, A. E. Wright, C. Pecorella, S. H. Sennett, J. Lopez, and G. Samples. (1998) Chapter 15. In vitro production of marine-derived antitumor compounds. IN: New Developments in Marine Biotechnology (Y. Le Gal and H. O. Halvorson, eds.), Plenum Press, New York, pp. 73-76.

Pomponi, S.A., R. Willoughby, and M. Kelly-Borges. 1997. Sponge Cell Culture. IN: Molecular Approaches to the Study of the Ocean (Cooksey, K., ed). Chapman & Hall, pp. 423-429.

Pomponi, S.A., R. Willoughby, M.E. Kaighn, and A.E. Wright. 1997. Development of techniques for in vitro production of bioactive natural products from marine sponges. IN: Invertebrate Cell Culture: Novel Directions and Biotechnology Applications (Maramorosch, K. & J. Mitsuhashi, eds.). Science Publishers, Inc., pp. 231-237.

Kelly-Borges, M., E.V. Robinson, S.P. Gunasekera, M. Gunasekera, N.K. Gulavita, and S.A. Pomponi. 1994. Species differentiation in the marine sponge genus Discodermia (Demospongiae Lithistida): the utility of ethanol extract profiles as species-specific chemotaxonomic markers. Biochemical Systematics and Ecology 22:353-365.

Kelly-Borges, M. and S.A. Pomponi. 1994. Phylogeny and classification of lithistid sponges (Porifera: Demospongiae): a preliminary assessment using ribosomal DNA sequence comparisons. Molecular Marine Biology and Biotechnology 3(2): 87-103.