User:Plutoandcosmo/PGLO

Discovery of GFP
The GFP gene was first observed by Osamu Shimomura and his team in 1962 while studying the jellyfish Aequorea victoria that have a ring of blue light under their umbrella. Shimomura and his team isolated the protein aequorin from thousands of jellyfish until they gathered enough for a full analysis of the protein. It was through the study of aequorin that Shimomura discovered small amounts of GFP which glows green when aequorin emits blue light. After successfully discovering how GFP works with aequorin in the jellyfish, he set it aside to study bioluminescence in other organisms.

In 1994 Marty Chalfie and his team were able to successfully create bacteria and round worms that express the GFP protein. Soon after, Roger Tsien and his team were able to create mutant GFP that can emit a range of colors, not just green. The three scientist hold the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2008 for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP.