Qian Yongjian (English name: Roger Qian Yongjian)
China chemist, academician of American Academy of Sciences and Medical College, professor of chemistry and pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego, nephew of Qian Xuesen, a famous scientist in China.
According to overseas media reports, Qian Yongjian and Lieber of Harvard University are expected to win the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry. He invented multicolor fluorescent protein labeling technology, which brought a revolution to the development of cell biology and neurobiology.
Name: Qian Yongjian.
English: Qian Yongjian, money.
Gender: male
Birth: 1952
Born in: new york
Nationality: USA
Ancestral home: Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Uncle: Qian Xuesen, the father of Chinese missiles.
Brother: Richard Tsien, a professor at Stanford University and former head of the Department of Physiology.
Honor:
/kloc-at the age of 0/6, he was awarded the scientific talent of Westinghouse for the topic of how to combine metal with thiocyanate.
At the age of 20, he got a bachelor's degree from Harvard University (won a national scholarship).
Ph.D. and postdoctoral fellow (Physiology), Cambridge University
He has won many awards from wolf prize in medicine (2004), American National Chemical Society and protein Institution.
Qian Yongjian and bioluminescence.
From 65438 to 0994, Qian Yongjian, a Chinese-American scientist, began to transform green fluorescent protein and made many discoveries. Most of the products used in the world are varieties modified by Qian Yongjian laboratory, some have stronger fluorescence, some are yellow and blue, and some can be activated to change color. It has become a hobby for some people to look for colored protein in some creatures that are not often used as research models. This phenomenon is like a wave of polymerase used for PCR widely used in thermophiles in the past. But I didn't really find many useful things. A successful example is the discovery of other fluorescent proteins, including red fluorescent proteins, from corals by Sergey A. Lukyanov laboratory of bioorganic chemistry Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences.
Bioluminescence has been studied before Shimomura and Johnson. Fireflies glow. Luciferase, as a substrate molecule fluorescein, produces fluorescence after chemical reactions such as oxidation. Protein itself emits light without substrate, which originated from the research of Shimomura and Johnson.
Shimomura and Johnson used several experimental animals. Related to this story is a jellyfish called Victoria jellyfish. 1962, Shimomura Xiu and Johansen reported in the Journal of Cell and Comparative Physiology that they isolated and purified the luminescent protein aequorin from jellyfish. It is said that Shimomura was preparing to go home one day when extracting luminescent protein from jellyfish. He poured the product into the pool, turned off the light before going out, and reluctantly looked back at the pool, and the pool was bright. Because the pool also received water from the aquarium, he suspected that the composition of the aquarium affected the jellyfish, and soon he determined that calcium ions enhanced the jellyfish's luminescence. 1963 They reported the relationship between calcium and jellyfish luminescence in the journal Science. Later, Ridgway and Ashley proposed that jellyfish could be used to detect calcium concentration, creating a new method for detecting calcium. Calcium ion is an important signal molecule in organisms. Jellyfish became the first method to detect calcium with spatial resolution, and it is also one of the methods still in use.
1955 Davenport and Nicole found that jellyfish can emit green light, but they don't know why. 1962, Shimomura and Johnson wrote a footnote in the article "Purification of Jellyfish", saying that another kind of protein was discovered, which was green in sunlight, yellow on tungsten wire and strong green under ultraviolet light. Later, they carefully studied its luminous characteristics. 1974, they purified this protein, which was later called green protein and later called green fluorescent protein GFP. Moran and Hastings suggest that energy transfer may occur between jellyfish and green fluorescent protein. Jellyfish will emit light when stimulated by calcium, and its energy can be transferred to GFP to stimulate GFP to emit light. This is the discovery of fluorescence vibrational energy transfer (FRET) in biology, which is known in physical chemistry.
Shimomura himself is not interested in the application prospect of GFP, nor does he realize the importance of application. After he left Princeton for Woodhole Oceanographic Institute, his colleague Douglas Pracher was very interested in inventing biological tracer molecules. 1985, Prashi and Japanese scientist Satoshi Inouye independently obtained the gene (cDNA) of jellyfish according to the protein sequence. 1992, pula obtained GFP gene. With cDNA, ordinary biological researchers can make good use of it, which is much more convenient than using protein.
After the publication of GFP cDNA in Prashi 1992, the research stopped. When he applied to the National Science Foundation of the United States, the judges said that there was no precedent for protein to shine, and even if he found it, it would be of little value. In a rage, he left academia and went to the Massachusetts Air National Guard Base to work for the Department of Animal and Plant Services of the Ministry of Agriculture. At that time, if he spent a few dollars, he could do a very beautiful job that ordinary graduate students could do: put the GFP gene of jellyfish into other organisms, such as bacteria, and when he saw fluorescence, it completely proved that GFP itself could emit light without other substrates or auxiliary molecules.
Two laboratories in 1994 independently completed the work of expressing GFP into other organisms: the nematode laboratory of Marty Chalfie of Columbia University, and two Japanese scientists Inouye and Tsuji of University of California, San Diego and Scripps Institute of Oceanography.
Both jellyfish and green fluorescent protein have important applications. But jellyfish is also a kind of luciferase, and it needs fluorescein. The GFP protein itself can emit light, which has made a major breakthrough in principle.
Chalfie's article immediately caused a sensation, and many biological researchers introduced GFP into their own systems. Using the new system to express GFP, you can publish articles in Nature and Science, but only follow the trend, not original.
Throughout the whole process, from 196 1 to 1974, the research on Shimomura Xiu and Johnson is far ahead, but few people pay attention to it. If other biochemists want to, they can also get jellyfish and GFP, and the technology is not particularly difficult. After 1974, especially after 80, many graduate students have an easy time doing the follow-up work. The exception is the new color of the variety found in Qian Yongjian laboratory, which is not obvious.
Qian Yongjian's works
Qian Yongjian is an important scientist related to the study of Shimomura. In his imaging technology, there are two important jobs related to Xiacun.
One is calcium dye. 1980, Qian Yongjian invented dye molecules for detecting calcium ion concentration, 198 1 year. He improved the method of introducing dyes into cells, and later invented more and better dyes, which were widely used. There are three methods to detect calcium: selective electrode method, jellyfish method and calcium dye method. Before the appearance of calcium dyes in Qian Yongjian, only jellyfish had the ability of space detection, but at that time jellyfish needed to be injected into cells, which was inconvenient to use, while dyes in Qian Yongjian could penetrate into cells. Jellyfish and calcium dyes have their own advantages and disadvantages, and many people are using dyes at present. Qian Yongjian also invented various dyes to study other molecules.
Qian Yongjian's second job is GFP. Starting from 1994, Qian Yongjian began to study GFP, improved its luminous intensity and color (invented variants and many different colors), invented more application methods, and clarified its luminous principle. Most FP used in the world are variations of his invention. His patent was used by many people and sold by the company.
Since 1980s, Qian Yongjian's works have attracted people's attention. He is probably the most invited scientist to give academic lectures in the world, because both chemistry and biology have to listen to his lectures, which have both technical applications and some interesting phenomena. He was born in 1952, and his age allowed him to wait for many years (while 80-year-old Shimomura Xiu did not have this advantage). Therefore, for many years, many people thought that Qian Yongjian would win the Nobel Prize in chemistry or physiology. It must be pointed out that the work of Shimomura is very positive, and Qian also publicly introduced Shimomura's findings earlier.
Qian Yongjian is Qian Xuesen's nephew. There are many scientists and engineers in his family. He won the first prize of Westinghouse Genius Award in middle school, studied chemistry and physics at Harvard, graduated at the age of 20, and obtained a doctorate in physiology from Cambridge University in England. His brother, Richard W. Tsien, is a neurobiologist and a former head of the Department of Physiology at Stanford University. The two brothers won Rhodes and Marshall Scholarship respectively (generally considered as the two most competitive scholarships for American college students, and President Clinton won Rhodes), went to study in the UK, and both became academicians of the American Academy of Sciences in the 1990s. After Qian Xuesen returned to China, when his children should go to college, the domestic education system was greatly damaged, so that Qian Xuesen's children Qian Yonggang and Qian Yongzhen did not get the development environment of their cousins. Qian Yonggang was born in 1948 and didn't go to college until after the Cultural Revolution. I hope that when Mr. Qian Xuesen was alive, Qian Yongjian would win the prize to comfort his family.
I know Qian Lihui, not Qian Yongjian. I have a colleague at the University of Washington who has made important discoveries and inventions in neurobiology and modern imaging. He is very demanding and picky. He published articles in public, criticized hot areas, and many people did not solve problems. He also looked down on some Nobel Prize winners. One year, just after the winners were announced, I went to his office to chat. Before I could speak, he said, "Today is an unfortunate day". He thinks that none of those people deserves the prize. The critic admired Qian Yongjian very much.
Reference: /view/ 1027743.htm