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1 Japanese, 2 Americans win Nobel chemistry prize
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 09 - 10 - 2008


Three U.S.-based scientists won a Nobel
Prize on Wednesday for turning a glowing green protein from
jellyfish into a revolutionary way to watch the tiniest
details of life within cells and living creatures, reported ap.
Osamu Shimomura, a Japanese citizen who works in the
United States, and Americans Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien
shared the chemistry prize for discovering and developing
green fluorescent protein, or GFP.
When exposed to ultraviolet light, the protein glows
green. It can act as a marker on otherwise invisible
proteins within cells to trace them as they go about their
business. It can tag individual cells in tissue. And it can
show when and where particular genes turn on and off.
Researchers worldwide now use GFP to track 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.
In awarding the prize, the Royal Swedish 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 scientists.
GFP's chemical cousins produce other colors, which let
scientists follow multiple cells or proteins
simultaneously.
«This is a technology that has literally transformed
medical research,» said Dr. John Frangioni, an associate
professor of medicine and radiology at Harvard Medical
School. «For the first time, scientists could study both
genes and proteins in living cells and in living animals.»
Last year, in what the Nobel citation called a
«spectacular experiment,» Harvard researchers announced
that they had tagged brain cells in mice with some 90
colors. The technique is called «Brainbow.»
GFP was first discovered by Shimomura at Princeton
University. He'd been seeking the protein that lets a
certain kind of jellyfish glow green around its edge. In
the summer of 1961, he and a colleague processed tissue
from about 10,000 jellyfish they'd collected near the
island town of Friday Harbor, Washington. The next year,
they reported the finding of GFP.
Some 30 years later, Chalfie showed that the GFP gene
could make individual nerve cells in a tiny worm glow
bright green.
Tsien's work provided GFP-like proteins that extended the
scientific palette to a variety of colors. Tsien «really
made it a tool that was extremely useful to lots of
people,» Chalfie told reporters.
Shimomura, 80, now works at the Marine Biological
Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and the Boston
University Medical School. Chalfie, 61, is a professor at
Columbia University in New York, while Tsien, 56, is a
professor at the University of California, San Diego, and
an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
The trio will split the $1.4 million award.
Chalfie said he slept through the Nobel committee's phone
calls early Wednesday because he'd accidentally adjusted
his telephone to ring very softly. He found out about the
prize only when he checked the Nobel Web site to see who
had won.
«It's not something out of the blue, but 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,» Chalfie
said.
Shimomura told reporters that he, too, was surprised.
«My accomplishment was just the discovery of a protein.
... But I am happy,» he said.
Speaking to reporters by telephone, Tsien thanked
scientists worldwide. When they do «good things with GFP
and its progeny,» Tsien said he can «bask in the warmth
of that glow a little bit too.»
Gunnar von Heijne, the chairman of the chemistry prize
committee, demonstrated the award-winning research to
reporters by shining ultraviolet light on a tube with E.
coli bacteria containing GFP. The tube glowed green.
Von Heijne said that kind of result «gets scientists'
hearts beating three times faster than normal.»
The winners of the Nobel Prizes in medicine and physics
were presented earlier this week. The prizes for
literature, peace and economics are due to be announced
Thursday, Friday and Monday.
Three Americans, three Japanese, two French and one German
researcher have won Nobel Prizes so far this year.
The awards include the money, a diploma and an invitation
to the prize ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on Dec. 10,
the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in
1896.


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