Earlier today, the Nobel committee announced that the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Y. Tsien "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP." There's much to be said for how useful a tool GFP has been in cellular biology, but Alex Palazzo has already covered it at The Daily Transcript, so go check out his post for more.
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From the Nobel site:
8 October 2008
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2008 jointly to
Nature's gift of green fluorescent protein (GFP) from the jellyfish, Aequorea victoria, has always been important to me, personally and professionally. In fact, PharmGirl, MD, and I would have never met if not for this wonder macromolecule nor then would PharmKid exist.
[Introduction|Part 2]
In the past 15 years, the two biggest technical advances that have helped us Cell Biologists are RNAi and green fluorescent protein, aka GFP.