University of California President Mark Yudof
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Oct. 8 that the Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to UC San Diego professor Roger Y. Tsien for his role in helping to discover the green fluorescent protein and develop its use as a tagging tool in bioscience.
Tsien, 56, will share the $1.4 million prize with Osamu Shimomura of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and Boston University Medical School in Massachusetts, and with Martin Chalfie of Columbia University in New York.
Tsien, a professor of pharmacology, chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego and UCSD School of Medicine and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, has dedicated his career to the development and application of fluorescent protein probes that enable scientists to monitor cellular function. He describes his life's work as "building molecules to look inside of cells, allowing us to see beyond what the human eye can see."
"We're enormously proud of Professor Roger Tsien for this incredible recognition of his work in chemistry," said UC President Mark G. Yudof. "The Nobel Prize recognizes groundbreaking research and this is another indicator of the tremendous contribution UC makes to California and the world."
With today's awarding of the Nobel Prize to Tsien, 54 researchers affiliated with the University of California have been awarded 55 Nobel Prizes, including 22 since 1995. This is the 19th time that a UC faculty member has won the prize in chemistry.
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