[ad_1]
AsianScientist (October 26, 2018) – Professor Osamu Shimomura, who shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with two other scientists for the discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP), died on October 19, 2018 at the age of 90.
Born in Fukuchiyama, a city in Kyoto Prefecture, northern Japan, on August 27, 1928, Shimomura grew up at a time when Japanese militarism was at its peak. In his autobiography for the founding of the Nobel Prize, Shimomura recounted that he had to perform weekly exercises under the direction of officers attached to Sasebo College where he had studied, also recalling how he had survived. bombing by B-29 bombers.
Given the interruptions of his education during the war, Shimomura's application for registration at Nagasaki Medical College was rejected. He ended up attending Nagasaki Pharmacy College, where he was interested in chemistry. There, he helped develop a chromatography method that was published in the Journal of the Japan Pharmaceutical Company in 1953 he was the first of many research articles to become an author.
The first contact between Shimomura and GFP took place at Princeton University in the United States. He was invited to Princeton in 1959 to join the laboratory of Dr. Frank Johnson, then a professor of biology at Edward Grant Conklin University. Shimomura was responsible for extracting and purifying luminescent materials from the Aequorea medusa. He managed to identify the protein – equorin – that gave jellyfish their luminescence.
However, in the process of equorin isolation by column chromatography, Shimomura noticed a trace of another protein that elutes earlier than equorin and exhibits green fluorescence. He also purified this other protein in 1962 and it turned out that it was GFP that had defined his career and earned him the Nobel Prize. He reported the fluorescent emitting structure, or chromophore, of GFP in the newspaper FEBS Letters in 1979.
"When I found the GFP chromophore in 1979, I thought I did everything I could with GFP and decided to end my GFP work to focus my efforts on the GFP." 39, study of bioluminescence, my vital work, "said Shimomura at his Nobel lecture.
"In 1994, GFP was successfully expressed in living organisms by [Martin Chalfie and colleagues], and it was further developed in its current prosperous state by Roger Tsien, "he added, citing the two other winners of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
GFP has since become a basic tool in biomolecular research laboratories around the world. It has been used to mark an impressive number of molecules in living systems, highlighting fundamental biological processes such as cell movement and organism development. For example, by associating GFP with a protein, scientists can track the location of the protein in a cell and observe how it interacts with other cellular constituents. Beyond the field of biology, GFP has also been used to detect metals such as cadmium and zinc, as well as explosive TNT.
Shimomura retired in 2001 and published two books, titled Bioluminescence: chemical principles and methods and Luminous pursuit: Jellyfish, GFP and the unplanned path to the Nobel Prize. In 2013, he was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences.
Even after its demise, Shimomura's discovery of GFP continues to illuminate the path of research. He is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter, as well as two grandchildren.
—
Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: U. Montan / The Nobel Foundation.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.
[ad_2]
Source link
