Graduate Faculty Directory
Robert Smith
Department of Biological Sciences
Education
- MS, Pharmacognosy, Philadelphia College of Pharmacy & Science (1973)
- BS, Biology, Philadelphia College of Pharmacy & Science (1970)
Faculty Appointments
Distinguished Assistant Professor of Biology
Research Interest
Plant tissue culture as a means of secondary metabolite production
Development of effective screening procedures for antihelminthic testing of crude plant extracts
Synopsis
Plant tissue culture as a means of secondary metabolite production. Current projects include promotion and evaluation of taxane production in
Taxus media cv Hicksii. I also work on developing models for organogenesis and embryogenesis in plant tissue culture. A new focus is development of effective screening procedures for antihelminthic testing of crude plant extracts using Caenorhabditis elegans as the test organism.Publications & Presentations
Waterman, C., Smith, R.A., Pontiggia, L., and DerMarderosian, A. Anthelmintic screening of Sub-Saharan African plants used in traditional medicine. Journal of Ethnopharmacology. (accepted November 24, 2009).
- Smith, R. A., Pontiggia, L., Waterman, C., Lichtenwalner, M., Wasserman, J. 2009. Comparison of motility, recovery, and methyl-thiazolyl-tetrazolium reduction assays for use in screening plant products for anthelmintic activity. Parasitology Research 105: 1339-1343.
- Smith, R. A., G. Burns, B. Freud, S. Fenning, R. Hoffman and Sabapathi, D. 2000. Demonstrating type I and type II errors using Rhizopus spore diameter data. The American Biology Teacher, 62:654–657.
- Smith, R. A., Drummond, S, Haines, A., Porter, J. and Hock, R. 2001. Induction of umbelliferone in sweet potato cell suspension culture using mercuric chloride. Biotechnology Letters, 23:1397–1400.
- Nguyen, T., Eshragi, J., Gonyea, G., Ream, R. M. and Smith, R. A. 2001. Studies on factors influencing stability and recovery of paclitaxel from suspension media and cultures of Taxus cuspidata cv Densiformis by high-performance liquid chromatography. Journal of Chromatography A., 911:55-61.
- Smith, R. A. and Belzer, N. 2002. Production of haploid tobacco plants using anther culture. The American Biology Teacher, 6:443–448.
- Smith, R. A., Calviello, C., DerMarderosian, A and Palmer, M. E. 2000. "Evaluation of antibacterial activity of Belizean plants: An improved method." Pharmaceutical Biology, 38: 25-29
Contact Information
Office:
Science and Technology Center
Room # 275
Box # 38
Phone: 215.596.8918
Email: r.smith@usp.edu
