Nobel chemists get the green light
The discovery of the green fluorescent protein, which is providing researchers with new insight into various diseases, wins 2008 Nobel chemistry prize
So, how can a glowing jellyfish protein be worthy of a Nobel Prize?
Aequorea victoria drifts with the currents off the west coast of North America and is remarkable in that it produces a green and eerie glow. In the 1960s, Shimomura was studying bioluminescence, the chemical reactions within living organisms that produce light. He had isolated a bioluminescent protein that gave off paradoxically blue not green light from A. victoria. His follow-on studies revealed in 1962 a second jellyfish protein that absorbs the blue light from the first and re-emits it as a green glow. The protein was later to become known as green fluorescent protein (GFP).
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