The bizarre death of a Shanghai-born molecular biologist in the United States last week has shocked his family, friends and the scientific community in China.

Huang Guyang, a 38-year-old Chinese-American genomist, committed suicide after fatally shooting his former supervisor in Los Angeles last Wednesday, Shanghai Daily learned yesterday.

Huang, who went by the English name Matthew, killed his former boss, Dr. Tanya Holzmayer, at her home in Los Angeles.

He later killed himself.

The genetic expert had participated in the country's human genome project and agricultural genetic research at the two genome centers in Beijing and Shanghai since 1999.

The circumstances surrounding his suicide have surprised people who knew him on this side of the Pacific Ocean, especially his parents, who live in Shanghai and were unavailable for comment yesterday.

"I was absolutely stunned after learning about it from the Internet. So were my colleagues as the news spread," said Zhang Meng, an external relations officer at the Human Genome Center in Beijing, where Huang held the position of deputy director.

Officials at the Human Genome Center in Shanghai declined comment on his death.

At Fudan University, faculty members who studied and did research work with Huang expressed shock.

Some did allude to the fact that Huang was a proud man. "Maybe his intolerance of failure led to the tragic ending," said an acquaintance, who declined to be named.

But most agreed that Huang was an open-minded, sagacious and humorous scholar, well respected by all.

Many find it hard to believe he was involved in a murder-suicide case.

According to news reports, Huang lured his former boss out of her house by ordering a Domino's Pizza delivery.

The delivery man rang the doorbell at the Holzmayer residence, apparently ordered by Huang in his ex-boss' name and at her address. As Holzmayer was explaining she had not made the order, Huang appeared and shot her at nearly point-blank range on the head and chest.

According to police, Huang then ran away and called his wife, surnamed Dong, telling her, "I just killed my ex-boss and now I am going to kill myself."

Dong called police and within an hour, Huang's body was found off a path near a bridge, with a .380-caliber handgun lying near his hand.

US police are still investigating the case.

Huang was fired last June from PPD, a Menlo Park, California, pharmaceutical research firm in Silicon Valley, where Holzmayer was his boss, for unspecified violations of company rules. He had worked for the company for about a year and was in charge of molecular biology and bioinformatics.

Huang graduated from the College of Biology and Life Science at Fudan University in 1986, and went to Massachusetts University to pursue a PhD in biological science for the following six years.

He was considered a brilliant scholar in China who had ranked 11th out of 230,000 students in his college entrance exam in Shanghai in 1982.

In 1998, Huang was appointed a visiting professor at Fudan and later deputy director of the Human Genome Centers in Shanghai and Beijing, when the government urged overseas Chinese talent to participate in the country's scientific research studies on a part-time basis.