Dr. Roger Y. Tsien

Dr. Roger Y. Tsien, winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry for 2008, will deliver the fourth annual Sayer Vision Research Lecture on Wednesday, Mar. 10 at 1 p.m. in Masur Auditorium, Bldg. 10. His talk is titled “Breeding and Building Molecules to Spy on Cells and Tumors.”

Tsien, an investigator and professor at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of California, San Diego, was awarded the Nobel Prize for his contribution toward the discovery and development of green fluorescent protein (GFP). His work has developed GFP into a tool used by researchers worldwide to analyze the movements, positions and interactions of tagged proteins within cells. Recently, fluorescent proteins have been used to visualize synaptic circuits, allowing researchers to map glial territories and follow glial cells and neurons over time in vivo.

Tsien’s research is at the interface of organic chemistry, cell biology and neurobiology. He is best known for designing and building molecules that either report or perturb signal transduction inside living cells. He is currently designing imaging and therapeutic molecules that specifically target cancer cells.

For more information about the Sayer Lecture, visit www.nei.nih.gov/news/special/sayer.asp.