NOBEL PRIZE

2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry/Biochemistry



2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry/Biochemistry

Introduction

In 2008 three great scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry such as: Osamu Shimomura (Marine Biological Laboratory, Massachusetts), Martin Chalfie (Columbia University, New York) and Roger Y. Tsien (University of California, San Diego) for the discovery and development of the Green Fluorescent Protein.

The discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein is vital to reveal tumors or show the development of disease. The great value of this protein resides in the intense green light given off by shining a light blue and ultraviolet, allowing doctors and researchers to track biochemical processes within a single cell under the microscope.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2008, clearly sequential scientific contributions have become a curiosity of nature, as is the ability to emit green light from a jellyfish, a powerful tool in today's vastly used in biomedical research and biotechnology .

Discussion

Connecting the Green Fluorescent Protein to one of these proteins can be crucial information about what cells contain this protein, what are their movements and how they interact with each other. The discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein reveals tumors in a state of growth and shows the Alzheimer's disease development in the brain and is being used in various fields such as microbiology, genetic engineering and physiology.

The GFP protein was first observed in the 1960's in the jellyfish Aequorea victoria, on the west coast of North America. A clear demonstration of the enormous impact of GFP on research in life sciences is the high number of jobs that have resulted in scientific publications, more than 20,000, which in one way or another used the GFP. Today, fluorescent proteins are used, for example, in the study of the evolution of tumors or Alzheimer's disease in experimental animals, the process of formation of neural interconnections in the brain, the growth of bacteria in the detection of heavy metal pollution in the fight against malaria or in the production of fluorescent exotic pets, to name a few of its many applications.

As with the invention of the microscope in the seventeenth century, the GFP has revolutionized fledged and has shed light on biological processes were unobservable until use.

History of Discovery

It goes back to Japan after the Second World War when Shimomura was hired as an assistant at Nagoya University and was given the task of discovering a crushed mollusk glow upon contact with water. In 1956, Shimomura concluded that a protein responsible for the luminescence, helped him earned a doctorate (Remington, 1996).

In 1990, Martin Chalfie raised green protein, used as a tracer of cellular activity of one of the best known agencies in the world, the intestinal bacterium Escherichia coli. The experiment was successful and what was observed under the microscope bacteria green light to irradiate with Ultra Violet light. Shortly, after this procedure applied to visualize the neuronal receptors of another organism, the worm C. Elegans.

Roger Tsien's contribution was to expand and experiment with different colored proteins, not only the green phosphor and to intensity with which these proteins ...