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Fluorescent Protein Research Lands Scientists Nobel Prize

Posted by timothy on from the also-will-change-dinner-forever dept.

Iddo Genuth writes "The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced three recipients of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry award for 2008: jointly given to Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien 'for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP' — a remarkable brightly glowing green fluorescent protein first observed in the beautiful jellyfish, Aequorea victoria, in 1962."

1 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Good for them! by philspear · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There was a project with the goal to make a mouse that expressed a variety of different fluorophores in it's neurons so that you could tell one neuron from another, watch active processes, and so on.

    The best part is the name: the brainbow mouse

    http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2007/10/gallery_fluorescentneurons

    http://bioephemera.com/2007/11/13/the-brainbow-mouse/

    http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2006/11/06/microscope_renaissance/

    I think some of Tsien's work is more interesting, I believe he's made some fluorophores that you can turn on and off, or convert to different colors to identify specific cells, in addition to some dyes which fluoresce only in the presence of calcium.