Besides looking good, what other uses do fluorescent organisms have?

Speaking of bioluminescent creatures, the first thing that comes to mind is probably fireflies. In fairy tales, the flashing lights of fireflies are full of fantasy. Especially in summer nights, groups of fireflies often appear in the woods, fields, and rivers, dancing gracefully, which is really eye-catching!

For ordinary people like us, these luminous creatures have no other uses except for looking good. However, there is a special type of luminous organisms - fluorescent organisms, which are widely distributed in nature and have great significance for life science research.

You must have seen the following pictures, right? They are the contributions of fluorescent organisms.

Let’s talk about how scientists discovered fluorescent proteins through fluorescent organisms.

01. Discovery of fluorescent protein

The discovery of fluorescent protein opened the door to a new world.

In 1955, Davenport and Nicol discovered that jellyfish can emit green light. In fact, this was a huge discovery, but the two did not take it seriously at the time. They just thought that this might be similar to fireflies.

However, there is always someone who can notice the extraordinary luminescence phenomenon. He is Shimomura Osamu. When Shimomura Osamu was purifying the jellyfish, he mentioned a protein that can appear green under sunlight, especially under ultraviolet light. The green light is extremely strong, which means that ultraviolet light activates the protein.

And this protein is the famous green fluorescent protein (GFP for short).

Of course, it must be said here that this is not accidental. First of all, Shimomura Osamu himself has been engaged in the extraction of luminescent proteins. For example, before this, he had extracted luminescent proteins from another marine organism with extremely strong luminescence intensity, which also provided a good foundation and interest for his subsequent research. Secondly, it was also very difficult for Shimomura Osamu to extract green fluorescent protein from jellyfish. He needed to collect many jellyfish and then purify them.

But no matter what, this would be an epic discovery. Subsequently, Shimomura Osamu studied this luminous protein and analyzed its chemical composition.

However, at this time, people have not yet realized the significance of this protein.

02. Impact of Green Fluorescent Protein on Life Sciences

In fact, after Shimomura Osamu analyzed the structure of fluorescent protein, he thought it was useless and gave up. It was not until more than 10 years later that another foreign scientist, Glas Prasher, started another research: isolating the GFP gene.

Here is an explanation: protein is the main executor of life, but protein is produced by gene transcription and translation. Only with genes can protein be produced continuously or basic modifications can be made to protein. Prasher did this, and he isolated the gene encoding GFP from the jellyfish genome.

Of course, this is also the background of the times. At this time, humans have the ability to study genes. Before this, humans actually had very few ways to study genes, or the spread was very slow. But unfortunately, Prasher gave up scientific research due to lack of financial support, otherwise he would definitely have won the Nobel Prize.

However, he gave the GFP gene to Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien, who would become important founders of the field of GFP and even fluorescent proteins. Since they already had the GFP gene, could they modify or make it work? So they tried to modify GFP or make other organisms express GFP, and it worked.

This success is not a big deal, it directly promoted the entire life science. You know, when we do genetic manipulation, one thing we care about is: Is the genetic manipulation successful? But we can't directly observe whether the genetic manipulation is successful or not, so we can only stare blankly. If it is a cell, it's okay, but if it is a higher life, you have to wait. With fluorescent protein, we have an indicator, and we can visually see whether it is successful.

It can be said that with fluorescent proteins, life science research has gone from walking to high-speed rail. Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien have also become the masters of green fluorescent protein.

03. Application of fluorescent proteins

Then came the great discovery of fluorescent proteins, and people continued to discover new fluorescent proteins in various organisms, mainly lower organisms.

Just like this, fluorescent proteins of various colors have been discovered

Thus, this has formed the various colorful colors in life science today.

On October 8, 2008, Japanese scientist Osamu Shimomura, American scientists Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery and modification of green fluorescent protein.