2014 Leopold Marcus lecture by Nobel laureate

Roger Tsien helped develop brightly colored proteins that are now ubiquitous tools of molecular biology

Roger Tsien in his office on his first day as a Nobel laureate. (Credit: Victor W. Chen)

Roger Tsien, PhD, who, together with two other scientists, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008 for the discovery and development of green fluorescent protein (GFP), will give the Leopold Marcus lecture at Washington University in St. Louis this spring.

His talk, “Fluorescent Molecules for Fun and Profit,” is intended for a general audience and will take place at 4 p.m. Wednesday, March 12,
in the Laboratory Sciences Building, Room 300. The talk is free and open to the public.

Chemistry graduate students at WUSTL invited Tsien, a professor of pharmacology and of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego, to give the Leopold Marcus lecture.

In 1962, Osamu Shimomura, who shared the prize with Tsien, isolated a glowing protein from crystal jellyfish (Aequorea victoria), creatures that drift with the currents off of America’s west coast. The protein takes in blue light and re-emits it as a lime-green glow.

Twenty-five years later, Martin Chalfie, the third laureate, had the idea of putting the gene for GFP into a transparent animal, the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. When the animal was placed under ultraviolet light, the cells that contained the GFP gene glowed green.

Tsien’s contribution was to mutate the GFP gene to make proteins that glowed more brightly, glowed in other colors or glowed in response to cell signals. Other scientists added to the paintbox with the help of anemones, corals and other sea creatures, creating a stunning rainbow palette.

Under ultraviolet light, the eyes, noses, ears and tails of mice whose cells carry the GFP gene glow green. The mouse in the middle does not have the gene. (Credit: wikimedia commons)

Tsien will talk about the use of these genes to render visible what previously had been invisible, allowing molecular biologists to make movies of living cells in living color. He also will discuss new photoactive molecules that allow researchers to control organisms with light flashes and surgeons to see the cancerous tissue they are removing.

Tsien also will deliver a colloquium for his fellow chemists, titled “Building Molecules to Image and Help Treat Disease,” as part of the lecture series, at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, March
13, in Louderman Hall, Room 458.

About the Leopold Marcus lecture

Jack and Gertrude Marcus established the Leopold Marcus memorial lectureship in honor of Jack’s father, Leopold Marcus. Understanding
the need for student involvement, Jack Marcus asked that graduate
students be involved in the selection of the speaker and the
organization of the lecture.

Jack and Gertrude Marcus, who were involved in the pharmaceutical industry for many years, established Missouri Analytical Laboratories Inc., an independent pharmaceutical testing and manufacturing company, in 1964. In 1974, they founded the Marcus Research Laboratory Inc., a manufacturing company which produces povidone-iodine powder, an antibacterial agent used in surgical scrubs and liquid preps.

Jack Marcus worked as affiliate director of the Continuing Education Extension at WUSTL and received the American Chemical Society Board of Directors Citation in 1967 for a successful lecture series he organized. An honorary vice president of Saint Louis University, Jack Marcus also established the Leopold Marcus Award Competition there.