Corie Lok

I saw this article in the Boston Globe this weekend…an interesting back story behind one of the Nobel Prizes that you don’t always hear about.

Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Tsien got lots of attention for their chemistry Nobel last week—for the discovery and development of green fluorescent protein (GFP) as a molecular probe to visualize protein activity.

But this article talked about another scientist, Douglas Prasher, who didn’t share in the prize but whose work was instrumental. According to this article, Prasher, as a young scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in 80s, isolated and cloned the gene for GFP from jellyfish. But then he ran out of grant money and shared the cloned gene with Tsien and Chalfie. Both have publicly acknowledged Prasher’s valuable contribution to the GFP work.

Prasher now drives the courtesy van at a Toyota dealership in Huntsville, Alabama. The article doesn’t get into too many details about how/why he left science. But the story is a reminder of how tough careers in science can be and how they can take such drastic turns because of uncontrollable circumstances.

Well, there was one thing Prasher had control over: keep the gene or share it with others. Some might say that Prasher didn’t do himself any favors by sharing. Maybe he could have used the gene to get himself another grant? This kind of story feeds the fear that prevents competitive scientists from sharing.

But it can also be used to show the value of sharing. What would have happened had Prasher not shared his materials?

The Cape Cod Times quotes Prasher:

“When you’re using public funds, I personally believe you have an obligation to share," Prasher said. “I put my heart and soul into it, but if I kept that stuff, it wasn’t gonna go anyplace.”