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Osamu Shimomura
1928–2018 · Japan, United States · Born 1900–1939
Nobel Chemistry 2008
Japanese organic chemist who spent decades studying bioluminescent marine life at Princeton and Woods Hole.
Nobel-winning 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.