Talk about tag teaming! Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Tsien have just won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry together, after what can only be described as brilliant scientific collaboration and chemistry (oh snap!) The three were able to develop Green Fluorescent Protein, which though it may sound like a mere step above neon green eggs and ham, is really quite helpful when it comes to things like watching cancer cells spread under black lights, which is, in case you were wondering, a really fun Friday night activity.

According to Scientific American:

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to Osamu Shimomura of the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Mass., and Boston University; Martin Chalfie, of Columbia University, New York; and Roger Tsien, of the University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California.

 

The three men all contributed to the development of green fluorescent protein (GFP), which scientists today use widely "to watch processes that were previously invisible, such as the development of nerve cells in the brain or how cancer cells spread," according to the Nobel Foundation.

Shimomura isolated the protein from a jellyfish, and discovered its bright green glow when held under ultraviolet light. Chalfie attached the protein to material in cells in Caenorhabditis elegans, a roundworm used as a model in biological research, and made the cells glow. Tsien "extended the colour palette beyond green allowing researchers to give various proteins and cells different colours," the Nobel Foundation said. "This enables scientists to follow several different biological processes at the same time."

You’ve got to give it to them, the guys are seriously inquisitive! Who else would have thought to extract protein from a jellyfish and see what it looked like under blacklight? Stick it to cell material in a roundworm? Turn it different glowing colors? If you’re wondering if these guys were high when they decided to have a go at Green Fluorescent Protein, you’re not the only one, but the Nobel Prize committee sure was dazzled by the trippy, glowing cells.