The Nobel Prize has several rules which often leave great work unrecognised. It is not awarded posthumously, for example, and there can only be three recipients for each category.
Thus in 2008 the vital contribution of Douglas Prasher was overlooked by the committee, but not by the recipients.
In 1992 Prasher, a researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, isolated the gene that caused green fluorescent protein to glow. Sadly his discovery only came at the end of three years of funding by the American Cancer Society and he currently does not even work in the science field, but he freely gave the gene to both Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien, both of whom invited him to the ceremony to thank him.
Chalfie used the gene to demonstrate the value of GFP as a luminous genetic tag for various biological phenomena by colouring six individual cells in the transparent roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans with GFP. He correctly guessed that, unlike most forms of bioluminescence, GFP required no additional enzyme to create light by chemical reaction. His lab uses the simple nematode to investigate aspects of nerve cell development and function.
Chalfie’s interest in GFP was sparked by a 1988 seminar by Paul Brehm about bioluminescent organisms and he has published over 200 papers on the subject including the highly-regarded Green Fluorescent Protein as a Marker for Gene Expression, co-written in 1994 with others including Prasher.
Martin Chalfie was born in Chicago in January 1947 and went to Harvard in 1965. He initially intended to study mathematics but soon switched to biochemistry, although he admits to having doubts about his ability and hedged his career bets with studies in law, theatre and Russian literature.
After graduating in 1969 he took several part-time jobs, including teaching and selling couture for his parents’ dressmaking company before joining a research lab at Yale in 1971. His success there, including his first publication, encouraged him to return to Harvard where he gained his Ph.D under Robert Pelman in 1977.
He performed post-doctoral research on C. elegans at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, with (2002 laureates) Sydney Brenner and John Sulston. In 1982 Chalfie joined the faculty of Columbia University in New York where he performed his Nobel-winning work, aided by his wife and colleague Tulle Hazelrigg. Hazelrigg was among the first to attach GFP to other proteins, allowing scientists to watch where individual proteins go within a cell simply by watching for the tell-tale green spark.
Chalfie was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2004 but another telling accolade was the Harold S Ulen trophy he received as captain of the Harvard swimming team for his ‘leadership, sportsmanship and team cooperation’ – qualities he displayed by freely passing on his work to other researchers, just as he had received the baton from Douglas Prasher. |
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BENEFACTORS:
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(CL) Academia de Ciencias
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(DE) Freie Universität Berlin
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