How a Jellyfish Won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The greatest benefit of an advanced research projects practice is the potential for groundbreaking innovation and discovery. When research pushes the boundaries of current understanding and employs sophisticated methodologies, it has the capacity to lead to transformative changes in various domains, whether technological, scientific, societal, or organizational.
That’s applied research focuses on solutions and basic research focuses on principles and theories. Advanced research is both while simultaneously increasing the outcome as it reduces the risk of loss. That’s asymmetric reward growing exponentially, but not with time, with every discovery. Whether it’s a success or a failure. (Hint: It’s all discovery.)
Pioneering Knowledge and Solutions: Advanced research can uncover novel insights or solutions to problems that have remained unresolved using conventional research methods.
Interdisciplinary Integration: Advanced research often brings together expertise from diverse disciplines, leading to a holistic understanding of complex issues and the discovery of innovative solutions that might not be achievable within a single domain.
Competitive Advantage: For organizations, advanced research can provide a significant edge over competitors, especially in sectors where innovation drives market leadership.
Addressing Complex Problems: Many of today's challenges, like climate change, cyber threats, or global health crises, are multifaceted. Advanced research is equipped to address these intricate problems by dissecting their multiple dimensions and interconnections.
Driving Technological Advancements: History shows that advanced research projects, often initially deemed as too futuristic or abstract, can lead to technologies that transform societies. For instance, early research into quantum mechanics now underpins technologies like lasers, MRI scanners, and computers.
Setting a Foundation for Future Research: Even if immediate applications of the findings aren't clear, advanced research sets the stage for future discoveries by providing new frameworks, models, or theories for other researchers to build upon.
Economic Growth: Advanced research can spur economic growth by leading to the development of new industries, products, and services, as well as by creating high-skilled jobs.
“Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Wernher von Braun
The Jellyfish and the Nobel Prize
In the 1960s, Osamu Shimomura was studying the Aequorea victoria jellyfish to understand the mechanism behind its bioluminescence. He discovered and isolated a protein called Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) that glowed bright green under ultraviolet light.
While the initial research by Shimomura was to understand bioluminescence, by the 1990s, other researchers began to see potential applications for GFP in molecular biology. Scientists found that they could use GFP as a marker by splicing the gene for GFP into organisms. When these organisms produced the GFP, they would glow green under UV light.
The initial study of GFP was driven primarily by curiosity about the jellyfish's glow, making the upfront risk quite low, as it was basic biological research without direct, known applications. As with many foundational studies in biology, the primary "risk" was time and the potential non-discovery of anything of significant interest or applicability.
The asymmetric reward became evident in the subsequent decades. GFP has since become one of the most powerful tools in modern biology, serving as a visual marker for researchers. By attaching the GFP gene to other genes, scientists can literally "see" when those genes are activated in organisms. This has been invaluable in studies ranging from cancer research to developmental biology.
GFP has been used to:
Track the spread of diseases or infections in real-time in organisms.
Study the development and function of specific cells or structures within an organism.
Visualize neural connections in the brain.
Monitor gene activity and protein interactions.
For their work with GFP, Osamu Shimomura, along with Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008. The research into a glowing protein from a jellyfish, driven initially by pure curiosity, has since provided profound insights into numerous biological processes and has become an indispensable tool in molecular and cellular biology.
