Chemistry Nobel prize winners make proteins pretty October 9, 2008

Okay, maybe that’s a bit besides the point, but it’s true. The three Nobel prize winners – Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Tsien- found and developed a protein from a jellyfish, dubbed Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP), and found a way to bind it to other proteins, including the protein that makes DNA, making genes traceable through a creature’s lifetime, and often its offspring’s. This process has been used to study the brain, heredity, and all aspects of biology. It has also created some pretty amazing-looking images. Wired News has its collection of images, as does Mark Zimmer of Connecticut College, who is also working on this technique.