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That Nobel Glow: Jellyfish Protein Research Nets Prize

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The Associated Press

Published: October 9, 2008

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Two Americans and a U.S.-based Japanese scientist won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for research on a glowing jellyfish protein that revolutionized the ability to study disease and normal development in living organisms.

Japan's Osamu Shimomura and Americans Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien shared the prize for discovering and developing green fluorescent protein, or GFP, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

Researchers worldwide now use GFP to track such processes as the development of brain cells, the growth of tumors and the spread of cancer cells. It has let them study nerve cell damage from Alzheimer's disease and see how insulin-producing beta cells arise in the pancreas of a growing embryo, for example.

The academy compared the impact of GFP on science to the invention of the microscope. For the past decade, the academy said, the protein has been "a guiding star for biochemists, biologists, medical scientists and other researchers."

When exposed to ultraviolet light, the protein glows green. So it can act as a tracer to expose the movements of other, invisible proteins it is attached to as they go about their business. It also can be used to mark particular cells in a tissue and show when and where particular genes turn on and off.

Tsien developed GFP-like proteins that produced a variety of colors so that multiple proteins or cells can be followed simultaneously.

"In one spectacular experiment, researchers succeeded in tagging different nerve cells in the brain of a mouse with a kaleidoscope of colors," the Nobel citation said. The experiment was called the "brainbow."

Shimomura and a colleague found GFP in material they extracted from about 10,000 jellyfish they had recovered off the coast of the state of Washington. They reported in 1962 that it glowed bright green under ultraviolet light.

Some 30 years later, Chalfie showed that GFP could make cells in a worm glow bright green.

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