But in 1988 Chalfie heard about their strange properties and thought that it could be used as a signal to study proteins of the worm Caenohhabditis elegans, a classic model of biology. Levi Strauss is open to suggestions. Working with collaborators, he found a way to isolate and clone the gene that has the instructions to synthesize the GFP. In the mid-1990s, Tsien charted the chemical group that absorbs and emits light, and then modified it to do so in light of other wavelengths. Thus, today the researchers have new variants of the protein that glow in different colors. Joining the gene for GFP that directs the synthesis of another protein, one can label any protein that wants to study indicates Ermacora-.
As Kary Mullis with PCR (a process that allows you to make copies of the DNA), Shimomura, Chalfie and Tsien gave us a tool of universal application. Currently, Shimomura received the famous call from Stockholm, to five in the morning – is a researcher at the laboratory of Biology Marine of Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Chalfie, native to Chicago, working at Columbia University and said that he had not heard of the prize until it occurred to him to look on the Internet and found your name! Tsien, born in New York, is a researcher at the University of California, San Diego. GFP is currently used widely around the world and in different areas, among others: to follow the neuronal development, growth and tumor metastasis, brain damage in Alzheimer’s or see how the beta cells of the pancreas (which produce insulin) migrated towards the organ during embryonic growth. All this in real time and with living tissue! Tsien, also developed various similar to GFP proteins that produce a wide variety of colors, so you can trace multiple proteins or cells at the same time. These proteins were used in a spectacular experiment that marked different types of neurons in the brain of a mouse and resulted in a multicolored image that became known as Brainbow.. environment-business.