A Glowing Nobel Review
by Joyce Gramza |
October 9th, 2008 |
Published in
All, Blog
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As if winning $1.5 million wasn’t enough, the winners of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry also get an enthusiastic "shout out" from us. As storytellers who rely on images or video to report on scientific discoveries, our jobs have been made a whole lot easier thanks to Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Y. Tsien.
Before these laureates discovered the green fluorescent protein (GFP) that makes jellyfish luminescent and developed ways to use it to makes genes, proteins, and cells light up, we could pitch important stories all day long, only to be inevitably met with the excitement-quashing editors’ query, "What are the visuals?"
GFP changed all that. Now we science journalism broadcasting types can cover glowing mice, glowing pathogens, glowing body parts, glowing pet fish, and (my personal favorite) glowing fat.
So, thank you, 2008 Chemistry Nobelists, not just for enabling chemists, biologists, neuroscientists and even pet stores to take advantage of all the colors of the brainbow, but also for enlightening our viewers and the world in ways we’ve barely begun to cover .
Here are a few archival ScienCentral News stories on research utilizing GFP:
Growing Nerve Cells
[If you cannot see the flash video below, you can click here for a high quality mp4 video.]
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Interviewee: Robert Hoffman, President, AntiCancer, Inc. |
Cancer Killing Viruses
[If you cannot see the flash video below, you can click here for a high quality mp4 video.]
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Interviewee: David Curiel, Director, Gene Therapy Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham. |
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October 9th, 2008 at 2:49 pm (#)
Cool! One of the physics laureates is from Univ. of Chicago, w00t!