When I originally saw the rough-cut of today’s jellyfish article, I couldn’t help but think about the humble jellyfish and its massive contribution to science.
In 1962 an up-and-coming organic chemist at Princeton University, Osamu Shimomura, was the first person to purify the aptly named green fluorescent protein (GFP). The protein came from small crystal jellyfish, which he and his wife collected in buckets during summers at Friday Harbor Labs in Washington.
The power of fluorescent proteins, like GFP, is that they can be expressed in living cells by insertion of the gene using a variety of techniques. It’s also possible to make fusion proteins using molecular biology approaches in which a combination of the fluorescent protein and the protein of interest are encoded in the same sequence. The ‘tagging’ of proteins in this way has a number of uses, for instance as a marker of expression, or a way to observe the fate of the proteins in real time.
In 1994, Martin Chalfie was the first to get the fluorophore to express in both E. Coli and his favorite model organism, the nematode worm. Later that same year, Roger Tsien created the first GFP derivative: Enhanced GFP (EGFP). Since then, GFP and its many derivatives, from BFP to mTomato have made an indelible mark on microscopy, developmental and cell biology, and neuroscience to name but a few areas.
In 2008, Drs Shimura, Chalfie and Tsien shared the Nobel prize in chemistry for their work.
JoVE recorded interviews with both Chalfie and Tsien back in 2009.
GFP is used to answer all manner of questions from visualizing cell-to-cell transfer of HIV, to measuring protein diffusion rates using advanced microscopy techniques like FRAP.
So the next time that you come across the humble jellyfish or curse one for stinging you, just take a moment to remember how much we have learned and continue to discover by taking advantage of the tools that they have given us.
Further GFP viewing on JoVE:
www.jove.com/video/2149/imaging-protein-protein-interactions-emin-vivo-em
www.jove.com/video/2103/emin-utero-em-electroporation-followed-by-primary-neuronal-culture-for-studying-gene-function-in-subset-of-cortical-neurons
www.jove.com/video/1673/fluorescence-activated-cell-sorting-of-plant-protoplasts
www.jove.com/video/2745/high-throughput-screening-and-biosensing-with-fluorescent-emc-elegans-em-strains