Photo credit: Duncan.Hull — File:Martin Chalfie Royal Society.jpg (Wikimedia Commons) · CC BY-SA 4.0
Martin Chalfie
born 1947 · United States · Contemporary
Nobel Chemistry 2008
American neurobiologist who made GFP glow in living cells, launching fluorescent tagging as biology's most used tool.
Nobel Prize work
Shared the prize with Osamu Shimomura and Roger Tsien for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP. Chalfie showed that the GFP gene could light up living organisms such as E. coli and C. elegans, turning the protein into a universal fluorescent marker for cell biology.
Fields
Related topics
Fluorescence, NMR spectroscopy
Fluorescence reports excited-state emission; NMR reports nuclei in distinct magnetic and chemical environments.
Protein structure and function
A protein is a sequence that folds into a shape; its surface and flexibility help determine what it can bind or catalyse.