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Osamu Shimomura
1928–2018 · Japan, United States · 20th century
Nobel Chemistry 2008
Japanese organic chemist who spent decades studying bioluminescent marine life at Princeton and Woods Hole.
Nobel Prize work
Shimomura isolated aequorin from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria and, crucially, extracted and characterised its green fluorescent protein (GFP). His patient chemical work on this luminescent protein — honoured by the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry shared with Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien — gave biology a universal fluorescent tag for watching proteins inside living cells.
Fields
Related topics
Fluorescence, NMR spectroscopy
Fluorescence reports excited-state emission; NMR reports nuclei in distinct magnetic and chemical environments.
Protein structure and function
A protein is a sequence that folds into a shape; its surface and flexibility help determine what it can bind or catalyse.