Osamu Shimomura’s Jellyfish Nobel

Osamu Shimomura of Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory and B.U. was among three winners of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. The others were Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien. Each built on the work of the other to use the luminescent quality of fluorescent jelly fish proteins to create a method to observe the activity of biological cells.

 

Of old, people knew sea beings might glow in the dark. Shimomura and a colleague at Princeton in the 1960s identified the responsible green protein in Aequiorea Victoria  Jellies, according to the New York Times. Chalfie of Coumbia U. saw use of the quality as a maker protein  when spliced with the genes of a transparent round worm, Caenorhabditis elegans. Tsien mutated the green jelly fish proteins, and was able to create blue proteins, enabling observation of traces of multiple processes simultaneously. There is some weirdness here. Scientists have followed up on  wthis work to create green glowing pigs.

 

Winning the Nobel disrupted 80-year-old Shimomura’s quietude. Caught by the Globe of Boston, he more or less said this is horrible. Shimomura came from Nagasaki and sas a youth survived the atomic bombing. He’s retired now, and has become a collector of art prints. “It’s important to have a hobby to make your mind correct and straight,” he said. “To avoid any misjudgment.” Me thinks he was born to blog!