STOCKHOLM, Oct 8: Two Americans and a Japanese researcher won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for the discovery of a glowing jellyfish protein that makes cells, tissues and even organs light up — a tool used by thousands of researchers around the world.

The 10 million Swedish crown ($1.4 million) prize recognises Japanese-born Osamu Shimomura, now of the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, Martin Chalfie of Columbia University in New York and Roger Tsien of the University of California, San Diego, for their discoveries with green fluorescent protein.“The remarkable brightly glowing green fluorescent protein, GFP, was first observed in the beautiful jellyfish, Aequorea Victoria, in 1962,” the Nobel Committee for Chemistry at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement. “Since then, this protein has become one of the most important tools used in contemporary bioscience.”

Shimomura first isolated GFP from jellyfish drifting off the western coast of North America and discovered that it glowed bright green under ultraviolet light. For 20 years from 1967, he made a summer pilgrimage to Friday Harbour in Washington state to gather more than 3,000 jellyfish per day.

Chalfie and colleagues got bacteria such as E. coli and tiny worms called C. elegans to produce the protein by splicing in the right gene.

The green colour of the jellyfish protein appears under blue and ultraviolet light, allowing researchers to illuminate tumour cells, trace toxins and to monitor genes as they turn on and off.—Reuters