Laureate Biography
In 2008, Roger Tsien shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “the discovery and development of green fluorescent protein, GFP,” with Osamu Shimomura and Martin Chalfie.
The research behind the 2008 Prize in Chemistry began in 1960 when Osamu Shimomura first studied the bioluminescent jellyfish Aequorea victoria. Over the course of nineteen years, he and his team collected over 850,000 samples of the small jellyfish and, in the process, identified and extracted its green fluorescent protein, GFP.
In 1988, Martin Chalfie thought to use GFP to create a visual map of cell function in the transparent, millimeter-long roundworm, Caenorhabditis elegans. Though his vision took several years to actualize, in 1994, using the GFP gene located by Douglas Prasher, Chalfie published a paper in which he demonstrated that the six touch receptor neurons in the ringworm glowed green. Then, in the 1990s, Tsien contributed to this remarkable narrative by successfully developing new variants of GFP and other fluorescent and photolabile molecules that both shone more brightly and in a wide array of colors.
Today, with the aid of this new color palette, researchers have been able to study previously invisible biological processes, including the development of nerve cells and the spread of cancer cells. Fluorescent tags can critically help surgeons remove tumors by signaling the differences between diseased and healthy tissue.
Tsien’s interest in chemistry and design began at an early age. Born in New York, NY in 1952, Tsien moved with his family to Livingston, New Jersey in 1959. There, in a childhood notebook, since donated to the Nobel Museum, Tsien recorded sketches from his early, at-home chemistry experiments. His interest in science continued into his adolescence. When he was sixteen, Tsien participated in a summer research program at Ohio University, the results of which he entered in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and was awarded first prize.
Matriculating to Harvard in 1968 on a National Merit Scholarship, Tsien studied neurobiology under John Nicholls and future Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel. He graduated from Harvard at the age of twenty with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry and Physics. In 1972, Tsien moved from Cambridge, MA to Cambridge, UK where, with the aid of a Marshall Scholarship, he completed his Ph.D. in Physiology and developed molecules (later called BAPTA) to track and control the levels of calcium inside cells.
Following his Ph.D., Tsien remained at the University of Cambridge as a postdoctoral Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College and continued his work on testing and exploiting fluorescent indicators for calcium. It was during this time that he met his future wife, Wendy Globe-Tsien.
From 1982 to 1989, Tsien progressed from an Assistant, to Associate, to a full Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1989, he has been a Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology and of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego, as well as an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His 2008 Nobel Lecture provides the highlights of his research since moving to the University of California, San Diego.
You can find further information about his work and academic career here:
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2008
Roger Tsien’s Nobel Lecture
Roger Tsien, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator
Wikipedia: Roger Tsien