October 14, 2008

Former Friday Harbor Lab Researcher Wins Nobel Prize

Former Friday Harbor Lab Researcher Osamu Shimomura won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery and development of green fluorescent protein, or GFP.

By discovering and isolating GFP, Shimomura allowed researchers to develop methods for observing the behavior of proteins in living cells, contributing to dramatic developments in bioscience.

Shimomura’s work in this area began at the Friday Harbor Laboratories at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1962, when he found a protein that glows green under ultraviolet light in a jellyfish, Aequorea victoria.

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