Tjian, Robert

Tjian, Robert (Tse Nan)

(1949– ) geneticist; born in Hong Kong, China. He was a staff investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, N.Y. (1976–79), then became a professor of biochemistry at the University of California: Berkeley (1979). One of the most-cited contemporary biochemists in the world, he made major contributions to research on genetic transcription and gene expression in both fruit flies and in mammalian cells infected with cancer-causing viruses. It was his laboratory that developed sequence-specific DNA affinity chromatography, the technique necessary for purifying genetic transcription factors.