Why the jellyfish glow

In the waters of Friday Harbor, numerous glowing Aequorea jellyfish drift through the waters. From these jellyfish, Dr. Osamu Shimomura purified the bioluminescent protein, aequorin, for biochemical studies. While running the extractions, a fluorescent protein named green fluorescent protein (GFP) was also purified. Little did Shimomura know this "other" protein would revolutionize bio-imaging. About 30 years later in 1994, Dr. Martin Chalfie successfully expressed active GFP in E. coli and C. elegans. Successful GFP-fusion proteins soon followed; however, the brightness was weak. To overcome this, Dr. Roger Tsien and a post-doc in his lab, Roger Heim, began to make mutations in GFP to both increase the brightness and to create different colors. Today we have a whole rainbow of fluorescent proteins (image), but the purpose of GFP in Aequorea remains a mystery.
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