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Stockholm: Two Americans and a Japanese researcher won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry yesterday for the discovery of a glowing protein in jellyfish that helps scientists spot the onset of illnesses such as cancer and Alzheimer's disease.
The 10 million Swedish crown ($1.4 million) prize recognised Osamu Shimomura of Japan and Americans Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien for their discovery of the protein GFP.
"The remarkable brightly glowing green fluorescent protein, GFP, was first observed in the beautiful jellyfish Aequorea victoria in 1962," the Nobel Committee for Chemistry at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
"Since then, this protein has become one of the most important tools used in contemporary bioscience. With the aid of GFP, researchers have developed ways to watch processes that were previously invisible, such as the development of nerve cells in the brain or how cancer cells spread."
Shimomura first isolated GFP from jellyfish drifting off the west coast of North America and discovered that the protein glowed bright green under ultraviolet light. For 20 years from 1967, he made a summer pilgrimage to Friday Harbor in Washington state to gather more than 3,000 jellyfish per day.
Chalfie picked up on the discovery to demonstrate the value of GFP as a genetic tag for biological phenomena and Tsien extended the colour palette beyond green, allowing scientists to follow several biological processes at the same time.
Fact file: What is GFP
The green fluorescent protein, GFP, has functioned in the past decade as a guiding star for biochemists, biologists, medical scientists and other researchers. Its strong green colour appears under blue and ultraviolet light.
It can, for example, illuminate growing cancer tumours; show the development of Alzheimer's disease in the brain or the growth of pathogenic bacteria.
An even more interesting use of GFP means that researchers can follow processes inside individual cells.
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