This year’s Chemistry Nobel Prize goes to…

Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year, went to a trio of researchers that found and developed an obscure protein from a jellyfish and developed it into a system that has given us an unprecedented view of the movie of life.

There are lots of organisms that have some kind of bioluminescent capacity and tend to involve several proteins and/or additional chemicals such as the firefly protein or luciferase. They can glow, but only if you add a very specific chemical, which gets used up in the process.
The protein also known as the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP)is produced by a cell, some of the amino acids that make up the core of the protein undergo a series of spontaneous reactions that require only oxygen. Our cells are producing a structure in the protein that can absorb ultraviolet light and emit a bright shade of green in response. Because only oxygen is required for this reaction, any cell that can produce GFP, from bacteria to humans, can potentially glow green. Because no extra processing is needed, even living cells can be imaged using GFP.
The ones responsible for this are Osamu Shimomura of Woods Hole’s Marine Biological Lab, who did the work on isolation and basic characterization of the protein.
Columbia University’s Marty Chalfie, obtained a copy of the DNA encoding the gene and found that it happily glowed green when expressed in bacteria, even though these cells lacked the jellyfish enzymes and chemicals that were still thought to be needed.
Roger Tsien of UCSD improved the gene’s stability and altered the wavelength of the light it emits, creating Cyan-FP and Yellow-FP variants, among others. Tsien has also looked further afield, developing Red-FPs based on a protein isolated from corals.
A well deserved prize for making life into a movie.

Via: Arstechnica

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