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Jellyfish Reveal More Glowing Secrets & Bacteria Make Purple Sea Snail Dye
This Week in Synthetic Biology (Issue #14)
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The Crystal Jelly Unveils Its Brightest Protein Yet
Aequorea victoria, the crystal jelly, hovers in the waters off the coast of California. Decades ago, Osamu Shimomura noticed that these jellies emit a faint, green light. So he took pieces from one of them, did some experiments, and found the protein responsible for the glow. That protein — GFP — is now used in thousands of labs to light up the insides of microscopic cells. Shimomura shared the 2008 Nobel Prize for that work, along with Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien, who died in 2016.
Now, it looks like the crystal jelly hasn’t given up all of its secrets just yet.
In a new study, nine previously unstudied proteins, also from Aequorea victoria and a related species, were reported. Several of the new fluorescent proteins have quirky characteristics, too. One of them is “the brightest GFP homolog yet characterized”, while another protein can respond to both UV and blue…
