Martin Chalfie, department chair of biological sciences, was named one of the three awardees of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry today for his work with green fluorescent protein, GFP, a chemical that allows scientists to track biological development.
Chalfie, who is also the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Biological Sciences, will share the prize with fellow GFP researchers—Roger Tsien, from the University of California, San Diego, and Osamu Shimomura, from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. Together, the trio is credited with discovering, employing, and improving GFP, a glowing protein found in jellyfish.
“Columbia is extremely proud that our Chair of Biological Sciences Martin Chalfie is sharing in this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry,” Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger said in a press release. “He joins an impressive list of Nobel laureates currently on our faculty in a diversity of fields, from literature and economics to physics and medicine.”
While Shimomura first discovered GFPs in 1962, Chalfie is credited with uncovering the many possible uses for the protein within the field of biology. Chalfie published his findings in 1994, describing and popularizing its uses particularly as a fundamental tool of cell biology, developmental biology, genetics, neurobiology and the medical sciences.
Tsien built on Shimomura and Chalfie’s research by improving the brightness of these proteins, thus making them easier to use.
Today, GFP is widely used by scientists in the study of damaged cells in the process of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, genetic disorders and cancers. Because of their ability to diffuse throughout cells, the glowing markers can show how brain cells develop or how cancer cells spread through tissue.
Following the announcement of Chalfie’s accomplishment, he spoke, summing up his research and the process through which he and his colleagues came to win the Prize. Describing the many possible current and future uses of the glowing protein, Chalfie said, “We can take cells that are fluorescent and separate those cells out” or use “it to see if a gene is turned on or turned off.”
Reflecting on the process of learning, Chalfie said he is thankful for is government support, particularly as “support for basic research has diminished.” Without this aid and the accompanying research being done at Columbia, Chalfie said it would have been impossible for him to complete his work.
At the press conference, Chalfie said that the first thing he did after winning the Prize was call up a friend who had previously won a Nobel Prize, to see how he too could get his name on a list of Nobel Prize laureates who support Barack Obama.
Chalfie joked that the only thing that has changed, now that he is a Nobel Laureate is that “people actually listen to what I have to say.”
Lydia Wileden contributed to this article.
