2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Wednesday October 8, 2008
The 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recognizes the important role fluorescent labeling plays in unraveling the secrets of proteins. This year's prize goes to Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien (United States) "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP". GFP is the brightly glowing protein that was first observed in the Aequorea victoria jellyfish (shown in photo) in 1962. The protein is used as a tagging tool in bioscience, to make the invisible become visible. When GFP is attached to other (nonglowing) proteins, it becomes possible to identify their location and trace their movements and interactions.
Osamu Shimomura first isolated GFP from the jellyfish. Martin Chalfie demonstrated how GFP could be used as a luminous genetic tag. Roger Y. Tsien helped explain how GFP fluoresces and enabled its use in colors other than green, allowing multiple processes to be tracked simultaneously. Congrats to all!
2008 Nobel Prize in Physics
2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology of Medicine
Comments
Cool photo but even cooler explanation and discovery. Chemistry certainly can be studied to make the world a better place.
There’s a good video about Shimomura’s work on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/vculifesciences. It’s the featured video.
Why did roger tsien win the nobel peace prize for chemistry