The Big Bright Green Nobel Machine
October 8th, 2008 by excimer[1] And the winner is… two biologists and a chemist. But how could we possibly be upset by that when they won it for green fluorescent protein? It’s pretty! And it turns bunnies green!
EDIT: And kittehs, too!
So congrats to Shimomura, Chalfie and Tsien for putting pretty colors in the spotlight and, uh, making them useful for cancer detection or whatever. More importantly, though, for making use of glowy green proteins.
[1] Yes, I’ve used this Simon and Garfunkel reference before, but it fit too well here.
green kitteh pix or gtfo
the glowy kitteh was tagged with RFP, not GFP. But yeah.
disco kitteh, party animals.
RFP was isolated from marine corals by a Russian dude who skipped the diving part and simply walked into a Moscow aquarium store with a UV lamp and bought himself some of their corrals…
“Work smarter, not harder.” I believe that’s the central moral theme of scientific research.
In grad school, it is work smarter and harder.
Who hears Aequorea victoria when it cries? Enhanced GFP has an epsilon of 55,000/M-cm (488 nm) and emission brightness of 33,000/M-cm (509 nm). That was assuredly a fun lab – beauty, in the dark.
The bunny’s name is Alba.
Colorless green proteins bray mellifluously
Twist on this
I have mixed feelings on this year’s Nobel. GFP was definitely, definitely deserving, but…wrong category, I think.
I’m not complaining too much, though, because…at least it’s pretty.
That Tsien won the prize means they were recognizing the chemistry that went into GFP, including the mechanism of luminescence, the active chromophore, etc, not just the biological applications. It is most definitely in the right category, and would have been out of place if it had won in medicine.
Remember, biology is just applied chemistry
Which brings me to a more serious point, this doesn’t really twig with a lot of people- chemists and biologists. For our bioorganic paper we had to explain to someone that the reason something got selectively deprotonated was cause it was in an enzyme. And it’s hilarious watching biologists cringing at the thought of curly arrows… and one biochem lecturer talking about “manganesium” *cringe*
From my more biochem-friendly perspective, the physiology/Medicine Nobel tends to go for advances in organ system function and/or development (the olfactory system work by Axel/Buck, the developmental bio year when Brenner and Co. won), diseases (this year, the H. pylori work a few years back), diagnostics (MRI, natch), neurosciency stuff, and assorted medical miscellany. For better or worse, biochemistry is still chemistry……
Now, of course, my bet is on a physical/analytical chemistry prize of some sort for next year, ideally with applications in a number of fields. While I would get a special tingly feeling from seeing another magnetic resonance Nobel, I’m not going to hold my breath.
Anyone willing to shell out massive change to get the biologists their own prize?
I’m still unimpressed with Prasher getting screwed out of a share- if it wasn’t for a lack of funding his name would be on there instead of Chalfie.