Roger Tsien

UC San Diego chemistry professor shares Nobel

Roger Tsien will share the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to the development of Green Fluorescent Protein, which allows researchers to study cells related to disease in ways that were never before possible.

The Nobel academy compared the discovery's significance to the invention of the microscope. With Tsien's award, 54 researchers affiliated with UC have received a total of 55 Nobel Prizes. Linus Pauling, a chemistry professor at UC San Diego, was the only person who has won two unshared Nobels, one for chemistry in 1954 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962.

"We're enormously proud of professor Roger Tsien for this incredible recognition of his work in chemistry," said UC President Mark Yudof. "The Nobel Prize recognizes groundbreaking research and this is another indicator of the tremendous contribution UC makes to California and the world."

Tsien shares his prize with Osamu Shimomura of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and Boston University School of Medicine and Martin Chalfie of Columbia University.

"Our work is often described as building and training molecular spies ... molecules that will enter a cell or organism and report back to us what the conditions are, what's going on with the biochemistry, while the cell is still alive," said Tsien.

He is building on his work to image and possibly deliver targeted drugs to cancer tumors.

Visit www.universityofcalifornia.edu/nobel/ for more information.