TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · May 30 🪼 Your tax dollars paid a scientist to squeeze jellyfish through cheesecloth. Osamu Shimomura processed tens of thousands on an NSF grant to understand why they glow. He found a protein that glowed green under UV light. Called it "green protein." Nobody cared. For decades.
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Great description here: press.asimov.com/articles/gfp
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Yeah, a scientist with lousy aseptic lab technique looking at a completely different scientific question discovered penicillin that has saved 100s of millions of human and animal lives. Penicillin was discovered by curiosity—nothing more and nothing less. I rather my taxes be spent on science.
GFP became hugely useful once genetic rebuilding became a cookie-cutter lab technique. Nothing signals an active gene or a positive outcome like a glowing green spot..
Wonderful story. But science that reveals the mysteries of life and the universe—even without practical benefits to people—can be inherently worthwhile, just as great symphonies enhance what it means to be human.
That’s abhorrent
And then…
My sister has a toxicology degree, and she told me about the proteins and attaching the glow to cancer, disease, etc. This is what science is about - knowledge working to the betterment of the world. Money well spent.
The comments 😍 I learned something cool today
I read post 1 and thought, "And we care now because...?" only to be really thrilled some dude was given government grant money to squeeze jellyfish through cheesecloth!
The importance of basic scientific research cannot be overstated. That is all.
Thanks goodness for curious and adventurous people!
And incurious, small minded people can't understand how science works and that things that seem worthless to them, result in discoveries that make their lives better and they never even knew how they came about. Really makes me wish we could exclude them from making important decisions.
We really haven't moved beyond the "let's just tear animals apart to see what happens" part of science have we? I get that jellyfish supposedly don't feel pain but the sentance "we squeed jellyfish through a cheese cloth to look at its remains" is still horrifying to me
What a cool post, thanks!
Perfect illustration of why DOGE was a dangerously stupid initiative.
Science is 👍🏻
He tortured a jellyfish to death & ur applauding this?
Why waste money on "science" when we have so many elementary girl schools in the middle east to tomahawk strike?
Amazing
Well if we fund science then we won't have billionaire tech Bros to run the world. oh my what would happen then?? Social media is killing us! The billionaires love it how it is!! keep America fat, lazy and stupid! Fuck djtRUMP!
wonders how proud the jellyfish community is I know! Let's ask a Republican
Fascinating!
i like to think the f stands for fuckin
Dr Tsien died way too young. Our lab was downstairs from his & we got to hear his students & postdocs talk at 12P dept seminars.
This is a great thread. America is full of voters who can’t see 2 inches past their nose. On top of that, they’ve been told for decades that government can’t do anything right. Deliberate ignorance threatens pretty much everything that can move us forward.
How many of you complaining about how terrible this was for the jelly fish eat meat, dairy or wear leather? Pick a side......🙄
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Uh 🙄 and? Other than confirming that something causes them to glow (similar to lightning bugs/fire flies) did it reveal anything else perhaps a way to generate light without fire or electricity? How do jellyfish draw their energy that causes their illumination? Did they not find anything useful?
Yeah but did it help develop Viagra? /s
Naming awesome things is hard... And not the same kind of hard as discovering awesome things.
cruel
We used to have "blue sky" research. This would appear a great example of how funding it pays off.
The lessons I take from this thread: 1. "Trojan Horse" leads that don't immediately tease the subversion, prompt confused comments. 2. Read the full thread before commenting. See also item 1. 3. All scientific research is worthy. 4. Socialism does things Capitalism won't. See also item 3.
Considering the other things my tax dollars paid for over the last year and a half...
Taxpayers fund the R&D while some rich fucker sucks up subsidies, gets the patent, and double taps the taxpayer again to have access or benefit front the very things the taxpayer ought to actually own since they funded all of it or at the very least have access to without cost.
COVID vaccine was developed in part from lizard spit. Very interesting story.
I understand your enthusiasm. But I feel sorry for the jellyfish 🪼
There could be research for cures
Did any of that research money blow up school kids? No? Ok - I’m fine. Carry on.
If you’re interested in how scientific advances build on each other, watch one of my favorite series of all time. James Burke’s “Connections” had a huge influence on me when it originally aired.
Sounds cruel
Yeah funny enough luciferase and similar proteins were already discovered, no need to waste more money to figure it out just sequence the gene
I just LOVE that the dude's name was ' Shimomura'-- Like a combination of shimmer and mirror!
Pretty sure it's not gonna have any benefits to humanity unless you want to make humans glow in the dark
JFC
Squeezing jellyfish through a cheesecloth. You think they were alive when they did that? I bet they were. Humans are the worst animals.
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Ok, fine, it saved the world, but who is gonna clean up this big pile of jellyfish guts?
And our tax dollars paid a president to go golfing for the millionth time instead of doing his job what’s your point
In 1640, Fermat, a magistrate by day and a mathematician by night, published his Little Theorem, essentially for fun. Building off this work 337 years later, the RSA cryptosystem was first published as a means of secure data transmission. It is the foundation of modern banking.
🧪 Then in 1994, Martin Chalfie inserted the gene into bacteria and worms. They glowed green. No dye. No injection. For the first time you could attach GFP to any protein and watch it move inside a living cell in real time. Biology went from snapshots to live video.
I still am sad that the jellyfish were tortured and killed for this.
Ugh killed them
some of the best-spent tax dollars in history
Blue sky funding of research in the 50’s and 60’s is why the U.S. leapt forward, we need more not for profit research done in the U.S. again.