Biochemistry Nobel Peace Prize winner: Biological & Biomedical Sciences Essay

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BIOCHEMISTRY NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER
In 2008, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry Award was given to Roger Yonchien Tsien whom he shared with Martin Chalfie and Osamu Shimomura. They were awarded due to the discovery as well as the development of green fluorescent protein or GFP.
Roger Yonchien Tsien is an American chemist who was born in New York on February 1, 1952. He studied at Harvard University before completing a Physiology Ph.D. in 1977 from the University of Cambridge. He continued being a researcher at Cambridge until 1981. He left Cambridge for an eventual professorship offered at the University of California, Berkeley. Afterward, he became a professor and head of the research laboratory at the University of California, San Diego in 1989. He began his Nobel-honour research in 1994 (Grant).
His early steps as a pioneer in fluorescent dyes development are illustrated in his Ph.D. entitled The Design and Use of Organic Chemical Tools in Cellular Physiology which was supervised by Jeremey Sanders under the Department of Chemistry. These fluorescent dyes are known to be sensitive when coming into contact with particular ions specifically calcium. Tsien’s first experiment that involved Quin-2 which is a prototype, took place in the Department of Biochemistry. Fura-2 is another calcium imagine dyes developed by Tsien which is widely used to observed calcium movement found within cells. Tsien’s team developed another popular calcium indicator that materialized in 1985 and was known as Indo-1. In addition to this, fluorescent indicators were also developed which can be utilized for bio-relevant ions (Grant).
Taken along with his recipients of the Nobel Award were praised for the discovery and development of GFP. This green fluorescent protein is a substance that is naturally found in jellyfish species such as Aequorea Victoria. This substance is employed as a tool for the visibility of such actions taking place within cells. This discovery led to other opportunities at the molecular level regarding the study of various biological processes. Most scientists can benefit from a visual tool that signal protein activity taking place. The discovery of GFP was able to provide such visual signals to observe the production of such proteins and how they move as they approach other proteins found within the cells (Britannica).
Complementary to this development, methods to make proteins visible within the cells were discovered. This discovery allowed this protein’s movements to be tracked down along with their levels to be measured when cells react to particular signals. In 1955, green fluorescent which was produced by Aequorea Victoria had been discovered. In the 1960s, one of Tsien’s co-recipients, Osamu Shimomura along with Yo Saiga and Frank Johnson, illustrated that this green fluorescent is produced by the protein which was later known as GFP. A light-emitting protein also known as photoprotein is isolated from an aequorin jellyfish which is known to be luminescent. In addition to this, another protein was found out to give off a green fluorescent light i...