23 Facts About Roger Tsien

1.

Roger Tsien was a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, in collaboration with organic chemist Osamu Shimomura and neurobiologist Martin Chalfie.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,762
2.

Roger Tsien was born to a Chinese American family in New York, in 1952.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,763
3.

Roger Tsien grew up in Livingston, New Jersey and attended Livingston High School.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,764
4.

Roger Tsien's father Hsue-Chu Tsien, an MIT and Shanghai Jiao Tong University alumnus, was a mechanical engineer and had excelled academically, graduating at the top of his university class.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,765
5.

Roger Tsien suffered from asthma as a child, and as a result, he was often indoors.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,766
6.

Roger Tsien spent hours conducting chemistry experiments in his basement laboratory.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,767
7.

Roger Tsien attended Harvard College on a National Merit Scholarship, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,768
8.

Roger Tsien was appointed to the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1982 to 1989.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,769
9.

Roger Tsien contributed to the fields of cell biology and neurobiology by discovering genetically programmable fluorescent tags, thereby allowing scientists to watch the behavior of molecules in living cells in real time.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,770
10.

Roger Tsien developed fluorescent indicators of calcium ions and other ions important in biological processes.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,771
11.

Multicolored fluorescent proteins developed in Roger Tsien's lab are used by scientists to track where and when certain genes are expressed in cells or in whole organisms.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,772
12.

Roger Tsien mainly contributed to much of our understanding of how GFP works and for developing new techniques and mutants of GFP.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,773
13.

Roger Tsien had built the foundation of next generation sequencing technology that is widely used today.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,774
14.

Roger Tsien was a pioneer of calcium imaging and known for developing various dyes which become fluorescent in the presence of particular ions such as calcium.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,775
15.

Roger Tsien has developed fluorescent indicators for other ions such as magnesium, zinc, copper, iron, lead, cadmium, aluminum, nickel, cobalt, and mercury.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,776
16.

Mouse experiments by Roger Tsien's group suggest that cancer surgery can be guided and assisted by fluorescent peptides.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,777
17.

Roger Tsien was a notable biochemical inventor and holds or co-holds about 100 patents till 2010.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,778
18.

In 1996, Roger Tsien co-founded the Aurora Biosciences Corporation, which went public in 1997.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,779
19.

Similarly, Roger Tsien was a scientific co-founder of Senomyx in 1999.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,780
20.

Roger Tsien promoted science education to promising young scientists through the first-ever San Diego Science Festival Lunch with a Laureate Program.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,781
21.

Tsien had a number of engineers in his extended family, including his father Hsue-Chu Tsien who was an MIT-educated mechanical engineer and his mother's brothers Y T Li and Shihying Lee, who were engineering professors at MIT.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,782
22.

The famous rocket scientist Roger Tsien Hsue-shen, regarded as the co-founding father of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology and, later, the director of the Chinese ballistic-missile and space programs, is a cousin of Roger Tsien's father.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,783
23.

Roger Y Tsien has received numerous honors and awards in his life, including:.

FactSnippet No. 1,440,784