A pharmacologist from the University of California at San Diego and two other U.S.-based scientists won the 2008 Nobel Prize for chemistry on Wednesday for their development of a green fluorescent protein from jellyfish that has provided researchers their first new window into the workings of the cell since the development of the microscope.
Roger Tsien, 56, of UCSD, Martin Chalfie, 61, of Columbia University, and Osamu Shimomura, 80, a Japanese-born researcher who works at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., will share the $1.4 million prize for developing the protein that the Nobel committee called “a guiding star for biochemists, biologists, medical scientists and other researchers.”
The protein can be attached to any of the 10,000 individual molecules within a living cell, allowing researchers for the first time to trace their paths as they wind through the complex pathways of life.
It is “an essential piece of the scientific toolbox,” said Jeremy Berg, director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which has funded work by all three of the prize winners.
Researchers subsequently have adapted the technology so that micro-organisms will glow in the presence of heavy metals, explosives such as TNT and other chemicals, allowing the micro- organisms to be used as sensors. The protein is now used in some toys and even in art.
Tsien said he felt “a bit like a deer caught in the headlights. . . . Fundamentally, I’m no smarter today than I was yesterday.”
Chalfie said he had slept through early phone calls from Sweden and did not know about the prize until he woke up and checked his laptop.
“You never know when it’s going to come or if it’s going to come, so it’s always a big surprise when it actually happens,” he said.
Shimomura told Japanese broadcaster NHK he was surprised to receive the chemistry Nobel “because I was rumored as a potential candidate for the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.”
