SWEDEN: Glowing pigs help clinch Nobel prize

The discovery of a green glowing protein from jellyfish has netted two Americans and one Japanese scientists the Nobel prize for chemistry, reports The Guardian. Each will take an equal share of the 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.4 million) award. Among the controversial spin-off uses for Green fluorescent protein, or GFP, have been pigs and fish that glow.

Green flourescent protein is one of the most important tools that biologists use for investigating how the molecular machinery in cells operates. Attaching it to other proteins or structures allows scientists to watch a cell's molecular cogs at work.

The three winners are Professor Osamu Shimomura, who first isolated GFP and discovered that it glows bright green under UV light; Professor Martin Chalfie, who demonstrated that GFP could be used as a luminous tag in cells; and Professor Roger Tsien who investigated how GFP flouresces and modified it to produce more colours, an advance that allows scientists to follow more than one process in cells at the same time.
style=original]Full report on The Guardian site