Roger Y. Tsien

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced, on October 8, that the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to HHMI investigator Roger Y. Tsien, Osamu Shimomura of the Marine Biological Laboratory, and Martin Chalfie of Columbia University. The prize honors the scientists for “the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP.”

The scientists' work has transformed GFP, a glowing jellyfish protein, into an essential tool of bioscience. Using DNA technology, researchers can connect GFP to otherwise invisible proteins and watch the movements, positions, and interactions of the tagged molecules.

In the 1990s, Tsien, who is at the University of California, San Diego, obtained the cloned GFP gene from Doug Prasher and reengineered its protein product to emit colors ranging from blue to yellow. Since then, he has expanded the palette of fluorescent proteins, adding hues including tangerine, banana, and honeydew. He has also developed a way to monitor the interactions of proteins tagged with different colors.

Photo: Joe Toreno