ChemistryJapan’s Osamu Shimomura and Americans Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien won the Nobel Prize 2008 in Chemistry on Wednesday for their discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP.The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences says they shared the prize for the discovery and development of GFP, which was first seen in jellyfish. The protein is a widely used laboratory tool to illuminate processes in living organisms, such as development of brain cells or the spread of cancer cells. It said that their work has enabled “scientists to follow several different biological processes at the same time.”That means that researchers have been able to use GFP to track nerve cell damage from Alzheimer’s disease or see how insulin-producing beta-cells are created in the pancreas of a growing embryo. “In one spectacular experiment, researchers succeeded in tagging different nerve cells in the brain of a mouse with a kaleidoscope of colours,” the citation said.PhysicsMakoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa of Japan and Yoichiro Nambu of the United States won the 2008 Nobel Physics Prize on Tuesday for groundbreaking theoretical work on fundamental particles. The three were lauded for their efforts to explain concepts of the nature of matter and the origins of the Universe, created in the “Big Bang” 14 billion years ago. Nambu, 87, won one half of the prize for work in the 1960s on the mechanism of “spontaneous broken symmetry” in sub-atomic physics, the Nobel committee said. Kobayashi, 64, and Maskawa, 68, shared the other half “for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry,” the jury said.MedicineThree European scientists shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for separate discoveries of viruses that cause AIDS and cervical cancer, breakthroughs that helped doctors fight the deadly diseases. French researchers Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier were cited for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV; while Germany’s Harald zur Hausen was honored for finding human papilloma viruses that cause cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women. Japanese Nobel laureate has no passport, says wifeJapanese Nobel Physics laureate Toshihide Maskawa, an introvert devoted to thinking about the universe, has no passport to go to Stockholm to accept the prize, his wife said. His wife, Akiko, said that Maskawa does not travel overseas and feels “quite allergic to trying to speak English.” Maskawa charmed reporters after the prize was announced by trying to conceal his shyness, at one point sobbing and at another moment forcing such a grin that he stuck out his tongue.
