Roger Y. Tsien

Quick Facts

Full Name	Roger Y. Tsien
Occupation	American Biochemist
Date Of Birth	Feb 1, 1952(1952-02-01)
Age	72
Date Of Death	2016-08-24
Birthplace	New York
Country	United States
Horoscope	Aquarius

Roger Y. Tsien Biography

Roger Y. Tsien is one of the most popular and richest American biochemist who was born on February 1, 1952 in New York, United States. Tsien was the son of a Chinese American family, born in New York in 1952. Tsien was raised in Livingston, New Jersey. He attended Livingston High School. Tsien’s family tree traces back to Hangzhou, China. HsueChu Tsien was the son of a mechanical engineer. He graduated at the top in his university class and was an MIT and Shanghai Jiao Tong University alumnus.

Tsien completed his bachelor’s degree and joined the University of Cambridge’s Physiological Laboratory in Cambridge, England. He was awarded a Marshall Scholarship. Tsien remained at Churchill College, Cambridge. In 1977, he received his Ph.D. from physiology for research on the Design and Use of Organic Chemical Tool in Cellular Physiology. He was supervised by Richard Adrian in Department of Physiology with assistance by Andy Holmes and Gerry Smith in Department of Chemistry.

Roger Tsien had built the foundation of next generation sequencing technology that is widely used today. On 26 October 1990, Roger Tsien et al filed a patent of stepwise (“base-by-base”) sequencing with removable 3′ blockers on DNA arrays. Illumina integrated this concept with DNA cloning for their next generation sequencer.

Since the discovery of the wild type GFP, numerous different mutants of GFP have been engineered and tested. The first significant leap forward was a single point mutation (S65T) reported by Tsien in 1995 in Nature. This mutation dramatically improved the fluorescent (both intensity and photostability) and spectral characteristics of GFP. A shift of the major excitation peak to 488 nm with the emission peak staying at 509 nm thus can be clearly observed, which matched very well the spectral characteristics of commonly available FITC facilities. All these then largely amplified the practicality of using GFP by scientists in their research. Tsien mainly contributed to much of our understanding of how GFP works and for developing new techniques and mutants of GFP.

Tsien, who received his Ph.D. in 1977, was a Research Fellow at Caius College, Cambridge, from 1977 to 1981. From 1982 to 1989, he was elected to the University of California, Berkeley faculty. He began his career at the University of California San Diego in 1989 as Professor of Pharmacology, Professor of Chemistry, and Biochemistry. He also worked as an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Roger Y. Tsien Net Worth

Roger Y. Tsien is one of the richest American Biochemist from United States. According to our analysis, Wikipedia, Forbes & Business Insider, Roger Y. Tsien 's net worth $5 Million. (Last Update: December 11, 2023)

American biochemist Roger Yonchien Tsien, (Chinese pronunciation: Qian Yuong Jian; February 1, 1952 to August 24, 2016,) He was a professor of biochemistry and chemistry at the University of California in San Diego. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in Chemistry for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent proteins in collaboration with Osamu Shimomura, an organic chemist, and Martin Chalfie, a neurobiologist. Tsien was also an innovator in calcium imaging.

Tsien was awarded a National Merit Scholarship to Harvard College, and was elected as a junior Phi Beta Kappa. In 1972, he graduated with a Bachelor’s of Arts in Chemistry and Physics. His freshman year roommate, economist Herman Quirmbach (Iowa politician), said that he was the smartest person he had ever met. He also noted that he has met many brilliant people.

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. One such dye, Fura-2, is widely used to track the movement of calcium within cells. Indo-1, another popular calcium indicator, was also developed by Tsien’s group in 1985. He has also developed fluorescent indicators for other ions such as magnesium, zinc, copper, iron, lead, cadmium, aluminum, nickel, cobalt, and mercury.

Height, Weight & Body Measurements

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Who is Roger Y. Tsien Dating?

According to our records, Roger Y. Tsien married to Wendy Tsien. As of December 1, 2023, Roger Y. Tsien’s is not dating anyone.

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Tsien was also a notable biochemical inventor and holds or co-holds about 100 patents till 2010. In 1996, Tsien co-founded the Aurora Biosciences Corporation, which went public in 1997. In 2001, Aurora was acquired by the Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Similarly, Tsien was also a scientific co-founder of Senomyx in 1999.

Facts & Trivia

Roger Ranked on the list of most popular American biochemist. Also ranked in the elit list of famous people born in United States. Roger Y. Tsien celebrates birthday on February 1 of every year.

In 2016, a new class of fluorescent protein was evolved from a cyanobacterial (Trichodesmium erythraeum) phycobiliprotein, α-allophycocyanin, and named small ultra red fluorescent protein (smURFP). smURFP autocatalytically self- incorporates the chromophore biliverdin without the need of an external protein, known as a lyase. Jellyfish- and coral-derived fluorescent proteins require oxygen and produce a stoichiometric amount of hydrogen peroxide upon chromophore formation. smURFP does not require oxygen or produce hydrogen peroxide and uses the chromophore, biliverdin. smURFP has a large extinction coefficient (180,000 M cm) and has a modest quantum yield (0.20), which makes it comparable biophysical brightness to eGFP and ~2-fold brighter than most red or far-red fluorescent proteins derived from coral. smURFP spectral properties are similar to the organic dye Cy5.