The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced this morning that the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Roger Y. Tsien, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Co-winners of the Nobel were  Osamu Shimomura of the Marine Biological Laboratory, and Martin Chalfie of Columbia University. The three were honored for "the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP."

According to the Royal Swedish Academy, this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry rewards the initial discovery of GFP and a series of important developments that have led to its use as a tagging tool in bioscience. By using DNA technology, researchers can now connect GFP to other interesting, but otherwise invisible, proteins. This glowing marker allows them to watch the movements, positions and interactions of the tagged proteins.

Researchers can also follow the fate of various cells with the help of GFP: nerve cell damage during Alzheimer's disease or how insulin-producing beta cells are created in the pancreas of a growing embryo. In one spectacular experiment, researchers succeeded in tagging different nerve cells in the brain of a mouse with a kaleidoscope of colors.

Tsien's fascination with colors has revolutionized the fields of cell biology and neurobiology by allowing scientists to peer inside living cells and watch the behavior of molecules in real time.

He is renowned for developing colorful dyes to track the movement of calcium within cells and has genetically modified molecules that make jellyfish and corals glow, creating fluorescent colors in a dazzling variety of hues. Scientists worldwide use these multicolored fluorescent proteins to track where and when certain genes are expressed in cells or in whole organisms.

He grew up in Livingston, New Jersey, among a number of engineers in his extended family, and even from a young age he seemed destined for a career in science. Tsien's father was a mechanical engineer. His mother's brothers were engineering professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tsien, who calls his own work molecular engineering, says, "I'm doomed by heredity to do this kind of work."

For more on this story go to http://www.hhmi.org/news/nobel20081008.html