1962 research at Princeton garners Nobel Prize in 2008

By Brian No, Special Writer
   Osamu Shimomura, a Japanese scientist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for a discovery he made as a researcher at Princeton University in 1962.
   Dr. Shimomura discovered the green fluorescent protein (GFP), found in the Aequorea victoria jellyfish, which has become an important tool in biosciences by allowing scientists to see cell processes that were once invisible. Scientists can use GFP, which glows green under UV light, to tag individual living cells to see the processes occurring inside them.
   The prize is also shared by Americans Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien. Dr. Chalfie was the first person to use GFP as a tagging tool by coloring individual cells in a transparent worm. Dr. Tsien was recognized for expanding the color palette of GFP, allowing scientists to use different colors to track simultaneous processes.
   But none of these recent advancements by Drs. Chalfie and Tsien would have happened if Dr. Shimomura had not been able to isolate the glowing protein that causes a jellyfish to fluoresce along its rim when agitated.
   Dr. Shimomura arrived at Princeton in 1960 as a Fulbright Scholar to work for Frank Johnson, a Princeton University biology professor, who recruited him after his impressive research in Japan on luminescent mollusks. Princeton, at this time, was a leader in bioluminescence research.
   ”I liked Princeton. I thought it was the best town,” Dr. Shimomura said in a phone interview with The Packet. “At least in the 1960s, I liked it very much,” he added, saying that the town has changed since then. He first lived on Nassau Street at the corner of Harrison Street for the first three years, and then lived in the Stanworth Apartments off of Bayard Lane with his family until his departure from the university in 1982.
   Shortly after Dr. Shimomura arrived, it was Johnson who first introduced him to the luminescent Aequorea victoria jellyfish. They decided to study its glowing abilities and traveled by station wagon to Friday Harbor in Washington State in the summer of 1961 to collect the fluorescing jellyfish. Using a net, they captured 10,000 of these jellyfish over the course of the summer. They squeezed the jellyfish through a filter to get a liquid extract called “squeezate,” packed the jellyfish extract in dry ice, and returned to Princeton.
   Dr. Shimomura spent months in Moffett Laboratory on campus, painstakingly purifying the jellyfish extract, trying to isolate the fluorescing protein. In fact, Dr. Shimomura said he didn’t have much leisure time while he was at Princeton. He would usually work seven days a week from 9 in the morning until 11 at night. On his rare days off, he would travel to Friday Harbor. )He would eventually make the long transcontinental journey to Washington state 19 more times for his research.) Several months after returning to Princeton, Dr. Shimomura was finally able to isolate 5 milligrams of a blue luminescent protein from the jellyfish squeezate.
   But found along with this blue protein was another protein that would fluoresce green under UV light. It was this latter protein that would “revolutionalise bioscience,” as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, who selects the prizewinners, wrote in its citation. Dr. Shimomura and his team published their findings of the proteins in 1962. The rest, as they say, is history.
   Dr. Shimomura worked at Princeton as a researcher until 1982, when he moved to work at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. Dr. Shimomura, 80, is currently professor emeritus and continues to live at Woods Hole after retiring in 2001.
   Since his departure, Dr. Shimomura said he has been back to Princeton only once or twice, most notably in 1990, “when Professor Frank Johnson died, and I attended his memorial service.” Dr. Shimomura observed then that Moffett Lab, located south of Frist Campus Center, had not changed from the outside. In fact, he said that while the campus hadn’t changed since he left, he noticed that the town had.
   ”There is a big difference compared to the ‘60s,” Dr. Shimomura observed. “Now it’s too crowded around Princeton.” He says there seems to be much more development and traffic today.
   ”My judgment might be a little too dependent on my memory,” he joked. “I like quiet places.”