Quote · The Peter Attia Drive
#401 ‒ How curiosity transforms medicine: extraordinary discoveries that changed modern healthcare
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The discovery of green fluorescent protein (GFP): how curiosity about glowing jellyfish transformed modern biology
At 10:22 · chapter starts 2:30
In the summer of 1961, Osamu Shimomura, his wife, and his mentor loaded into a station wagon and drove to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island to collect Aequorea victoria jellyfish. They cut the luminescent rings off the umbrellas by hand — one at a time — with scissors. Over 19 consecutive summers, they processed approximately 850,000 jellyfish. [1] — Peter Attia "850,000 jellyfish over 19 summers: Osamu Shimomura and his family cut the bells off approximately 850,000 jellyfish across 19 consecutive s…" 04:28 Shimomura's primary target was aequorin, a calcium-triggered blue-light-emitting protein, which he found. But lurking as a trace contaminant in every preparation was a second protein: one that did not glow on its own but emitted brilliant green light when excited by blue. He named it green fluorescent protein, or GFP, and published it. Almost nobody noticed for nearly 30 years. Then, in the early 1990s, biologists realized that GFP possessed three extraordinary properties no one had any reason to expect: it self-folds without helper machinery, self-assembles its fluorescent core from just three amino acids and oxygen, and — crucially — functions in virtually any organism on Earth. Because GFP is encoded by a single gene, you can attach that gene to any other gene you want, and the resulting protein will carry a green flashlight wherever it goes inside a living cell. [2] — Peter Attia "GFP ignored for nearly 30 years: After Shimomura discovered and published GFP, the protein sat largely ignored in the scientific literature…" 08:22 For the first time in history, scientists could watch biology happen in real time in living tissue: a cancer cell metastasizing through a mouse, neurons firing, an embryo developing cell by cell. Today, GFP or one of its engineered descendants is in use in virtually every major research lab on Earth. The 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Chen for work that began with a man and his family cutting jellyfish bells on a Washington State dock.
Osamu Shimomura and his family cut the bells off approximately 850,000 jellyfish across 19 consecutive summers at Friday Harbor, Washington, leading to the discovery of GFP.
After Shimomura discovered and published GFP, the protein sat largely ignored in the scientific literature for almost 30 years before its revolutionary biological utility was recognized.
GFP has three properties nobody predicted from a random jellyfish protein: it folds itself, builds its own fluorescent core from just oxygen and three amino acids, and works in virtually any organism on Earth. That combination meant scientists could, for the first time, watch biology happen in real time inside living cells.
