UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGORoger Tsien, a biochemist at the University of California, San Diego, (UCSD) who earned a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2008 for his work on green fluorescent protein, died last week (August 24) in Oregon. He was 64.
“Roger’s vision was vast and yet incredibly precise,” David Brenner, the vice chancellor at the UCSD Health Sciences and dean of UCSD School of Medicine, said in a statement sent to The Scientist. “He saw both the big picture, but also the incredible need to see and understand—in glorious color—all of the infinitesimal details that make it up, that make up life.”
Tsien is best known for his work on green fluorescent protein (GFP)—but he expanded fluorescent labeling into different colors, and even the infrared. “By working to understand the mechanisms behind GFP's florescence, Tsien has developed several related proteins that glow in virtually all the colors of the rainbow,” The Scientist reported in 2008 when Tsien won the Nobel with Osamu Shimomura and Martin ...
