Roger Yonchien Tsien

Nobel Prize winning chemist

Roger Yonchien Tsien, chemist and biochemist, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Born: 1 February 1952. Died: August 24 August 2016, aged 64 oger Tsien, who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for creating a rainbow of fluorescent proteins that could light up the dance of molecules within cells, died on 24 August in Eugene, Oregon. He was 64.

His death was announced by the University of California, San Diego, where he was a professor of chemistry and biochemistry. A university spokesman said he did not have information about the cause, but Tsien, who was visiting Eugene, had suffered a “medical event” while bicycling.

While other scientists made the initial discoveries of a green fluorescent protein from jellyfish, Tsien was the one who transformed it into the ubiquitous tool used by biologists today. After another scientist, Douglas Prasher, provided a copy of the gene that encodes the fluorescent protein, Tsien set out to make a better version.

“Roger, in his brilliant ingenuity, figured it should be possible to play with it,” Charles Zuker, a former colleague, said. “He would do the simplest, most clever experiments to get at some of the most fundamental questions in contemporary biology.”

The original protein glowed green when ultraviolet or blue light was shined on it. Tsien mutated the gene so that the proteins glowed brighter under blue light, which made them easier for biologists to use as ultraviolet light damages living cells.

When biologists seek to track the comings and goings of a particular protein in a cell, they first identify the gene that produces it. Then they splice the genetic instructions for