Green jellyfish protein scientists win Nobel

By Niklas Pollard

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Two Americans and a Japanese researcher won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Wednesday for the discovery of a glowing jellyfish protein that makes cells, tissues and even organs light up -- a tool used by thousands of researchers around the world.

The 10 million Swedish crown (796,600 pound) prize recognizes Japanese-born Osamu Shimomura, now of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Martin Chalfie of Columbia University in New York and Roger Tsien of the University of California, San Diego, for their discoveries with green fluorescent protein.

"Green fluorescent proteins allow scientists quite literally to see the growth of cancer and study Alzheimer's disease and other conditions that affect millions of people," said Bruce Bursten, president of the American Chemical Society.

"This protein has become one of the most important tools used in contemporary bioscience," the Nobel Committee for Chemistry at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.

Shimomura, 80, first isolated GFP from jellyfish drifting off the western coast of North America and discovered that it glowed bright green under ultraviolet light. For 20 years from 1967, he made a summer pilgrimage to Friday Harbour in Washington state to gather more than 3,000 jellyfish per day.

Chalfie and colleagues got bacteria such as E. coli and tiny worms called C. elegans to produce the protein by splicing in the right gene.

The protein glows under blue and ultraviolet light, allowing researchers to illuminate tumour cells, trace toxins and to monitor genes as they turn on and off.

"The discovery is of great use for humanity. In the past 10 years, in almost every second publication in the big journals, people are using this method," Lars Thelander, a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said in an interview.