Hires says he has contributed about half the content of the current version: “All of the historical background, almost all of the GFP mutations, how they affect the structure and color, and other molecular variations, some of which are used to make biosensors to detect pH, for example.” He wasn't the first, however, to update Wikipedia on Tsien's 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Within moments of the October 8 announcement, a contributor from Norway had posted the news.

Hires, who has been at Janelia for about a year in the lab of group leader Loren Looger, say he began contributing to Wikipedia in part “to procrastinate while working on my thesis.” Since then he's launched a science blog (Brain Windows) and has also worked on a few other science and nonscience Wikipedia articles, including “Techno-DJ music in the 1990s.” Although there's no pay, Hires says being a Wikipedia contributor “is fun. You get to be an authoritative figure on something that's pretty important.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION: To see Hires' contributions to the Wikipedia GFP site, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_fluorescent_protein.

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