The glowing Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2008

Six years ago, I wrote of a bunny named “Alba.” She was the unsuspecting rabbit whom science decided to, shall we say, literally “enlighten.” This year, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry went to the scientists who discovered the substance that made Alba and other things they are studying, glow. Osamu Shimomura of Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, MA, USA and Boston University Medical School, MA, USA; Martin Chalfie of Columbia University, New York; and Roger Y. Tsien of University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, won this year for “the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP.”

Why should something that makes cells glow be so important? It has to do with size and complexity. All living things are made up of tiny cells (only one cell in the case of bacteria) and inside those cells are the proteins that are responsible for all the functions of that organism — feeling, thinking, moving, breathing and whatever else you can think of. Cells are about .02 millimeter in size and something that small contain even smaller things and cells do carry very small but very fundamental things and one of them is your DNA. You need all the help you can get to see things that small and it helps to have powerful microscopes and it helps a lot more when what you are observing lights up.

Now, next is where “complexity” comes in. Each of your trillions of cells has a nucleus which houses your DNA. A series of DNA makes up a gene which in turn dictates what proteins it makes. We are made up of tens of thousand of proteins. Each of these proteins is made up of chains of amino acid types (20 basic types). The protein function is dictated by how long the amino acid chain is, the sequence of these amino acids and how the chain folds. A familiar example of a protein is insulin which regulates your blood sugar. Without it, your blood sugar will flood your system. With the discovery of GFP, scientists can now attach this GFP to the insulin and since it glows, they can see where it goes and if it really functions as it should. Literally, GFP enables scientists to see cells, whether human or of other organisms, better than ever before.

Reading through the materials that the Nobel Committee provided, I was especially struck by the story of Osamu Shimomura. He was the first one who was successful in isolating GFP from the jellyfish Aequorea Victoria — a creature that glows on the edges of its dome, like a spacecraft in the movies. He discovered that this protein glowed bright green under ultraviolet light. When he did this in 1956, he was not even enrolled as a graduate student since the war interrupted his education. In fact, this assignment was not given to regular students because it seemed too elusive to bank on in terms of finishing one’s PhD. But Professor Yashimasa Hirata of Nagoya University assigned it to Shimomura since Shimomura did not have a “deadline,” so to speak. But within a year, he discovered the protein and in fact got recruited by Princeton right away. As a “farewell gift” by his professor, Shimomura was given a PhD even if he was not even enrolled as a graduate student. Now that is a shining example of what a PhD is really all about. Your work is what makes you earn your PhD. It is not a PhD that validates one’s work.

The other Nobel winner, Martin Chalfie is credited for actually applying the use of GFP as an actual tag to observe biological processes. He did it with one of the most studied creatures in science — a roundworm or Caenorhabditis elegans. Scientists like to study this creature because it only has 959 cells, a third of its genes are similar to humans and most of all it is transparent — a great thing for light to be seen! Chalfie tagged six individual cells in the roundworm with the help of GFP. Since then, glowing cells have been quite a feature in biological experiments.

And if you are like my uncle, Wyngard Tracy, who is famous for wanting to figure out what goes on in every nook and cranny of the insides of his body whenever he feels slightly out of sorts, I think he will be fascinated to know that the other Nobel winner, Roger Y. Tsien, even made it possible to observe various microscopic processes inside the body using colors other than green. This means that it is now possible for Wyngard and scientists to watch his body’s “cellular shows” starring famous “gigs” of “proteins” in simulcast, so to speak, since they could use many other colors other than simply “green.” And I am sure that Wyngard will even have a say on which colors should be used so his cells would look tasteful.

So to the Nobel winners, thank you for making our inner biologies shine so we can understand them better and most of all, I urge you to hide from Wyngard.

* * *

For comments, e-mail [email protected]