Chalfie, Martin, 1947–, American biologist, b. Chicago, Ph.D. Harvard, 1977. In 1982 Chalfie joined the faculty at Columbia, where he is now the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Biological Sciences. In 2008 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Roger Tsien and Osamu Shimomura for their discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein (GFP). Using the GFP gene, which had been identified and cloned by Douglas Prasher, Chalfie demonstrated the value of GFP as a luminous genetic tag for various biological phenomena, enabling specific proteins to be located and tracked in living organisms. As a result of the work of the four scientists, GFP has become one of the most important tools in contemporary bioscience.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Biochemistry: Biographies
