Two US scientists and a Japanese researcher have won the 2008 Nobel prize for chemistry.
Osamu Shimomura of Japan, and Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien were named for their discovery of the brightly glowing protein GFP.
'The remarkable brightly glowing green fluorescent protein, GFP, was first observed in the beautiful jellyfish, Aequorea victoria in 1962,' the Nobel Committee for Chemistry at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.
'Since then, this protein has become one of the most important tools used in contemporary bioscience. With the aid of GFP, researchers have developed ways to watch processes that were previously invisible, such as the development of nerve cells in the brain or how cancer cells spread.'
Dr Shimomura, born in 1928 and now a professor emeritus at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory and Boston University, first isolated GFP from jellyfish drifting off the west coast of North America and discovered that the protein glowed bright green under ultraviolet light.
Dr Chalfie, born in 1947 and a biology professor at Columbia University, picked up on the discovery to demonstrate the value of GFP as a luminous genetic tag for biological phenomena.
Dr Tsien, born in 1952 and a professor at the University of California in San Diego, extended the colour palette beyond green, which allowed researchers to follow several different biological processes at the same time.
Nobel laureates receive a gold medal, a diploma and 10m Swedish kronor (€1.02m) which can be divided between up to three winners per prize.
