Post

Great description here: press.asimov.com/articles/gfp

You didn’t read past the first post

bsky.app/profile/bion...

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..

Discoveries in music too happen like "what if I played this with this?" Human curiosity and courage can't be beat. Even the "failures" are worthwhile: mold, adhesive. I love science!

Jellyfish have no brain, no central nervous system, no nociceptors. They have a diffuse nerve net that coordinates pulsing and feeding via local reflexes. A head of lettuce has more organized cellular signaling in response to tissue damage. How do you humanely slice a head of lettuce for dinner?

Jelly fish naturally turn into jellyfish soup. It's part of their be immortal strategy.

Idiot

Your sensitivity does you credit. In the grand scheme of things it may be a dialed up a tad high. But bsky is no place for such discussions. Be well.

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.

The discomfort is fair. Today it's regulated under IACUC oversight, anesthesia, and the 3Rs (replace, reduce, refine), nothing like 1960. And that jellyfish protein became GFP, now used to test the safety of the food, water, and medicine you consume every day. The cost bought real protection.

What a cool post, thanks!

In my opinion, the whole point of doggi was... Getting rid of twenty or so Federal investigations into its ginormous & various crimings: democrats-judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-su...

Science is 👍🏻

Why waste money on "science" when we have so many elementary girl schools in the middle east to tomahawk strike?

Amazing

wonders how proud the jellyfish community is I know! Let's ask a Republican

Fascinating!

i like to think the f stands for fuckin

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.

Or vegetables. Jellyfish have no brain, no central nervous system, no nociceptors. They have a diffuse nerve net that coordinates pulsing and feeding via local reflexes. A head of lettuce has more organized cellular signaling in response to tissue damage. Do you humanely slice a head of lettuce?

👍

Maybe read the rest of the thread?

Sorry for all the questions I am an inquisitive person by nature who is intrigued by all.

The extract makes the invisible into visible (Bacteria, virus, cancer, immune cells), which is why it got a Nobel prize. But since then, genetic engineering of this protein to react to many chemicals has made it really useful.

Yeah but did it help develop Viagra? /s

But the part that should keep PIs up at night isn't the Nobel's structure, it's that Prasher's science was right, his generosity was extraordinary, and the funding system STILL FAILED him. That is EXACTLY the pipeline vulnerability this series is about.

The thread as a shareable webpage: https://skywriter.blue/@bioniclab.bsky.social/3mn44dkdkvf2n

Naming awesome things is hard... And not the same kind of hard as discovering awesome things.

Jellyfish have no brain, no central nervous system, no nociceptors. They have a diffuse nerve net that coordinates pulsing and feeding via local reflexes. A head of lettuce has more organized cellular signaling in response to tissue damage. How do you humanely slice a head of lettuce for dinner?

Less cruel than having some other humans eat small protons of your food, drink small portions of your beverage, and test your medicine to see if they die, before you take them.

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...

That’s actually why it’s important to have MORE research be federally funded because federal research contracts have requirements for open publication and public good use. Private funding has no such requirements.

Not really. The GLP-1 inhibitors do come from lizzard saliva.

🪼 are part of the food chain/web of life and are the favourite food of some sea going turtles for instance Some 🪼 have 24 eyes arranged in clusters around the bell Some jellyfish are free swimming and don't just drift Some 🪼 can kill you All 🪼 are unusual, interesting & beautiful IMO...

There could be research for cures

Did any of that research money blow up school kids? No? Ok - I’m fine. Carry on.

youtu.be/N97cgUqV0Cg?...

Love that show!

Loved this show!

Loved the show. Learned so much!!

Yup, both serial discoveries and parallel research in different places. And with an engaging commentary laid over the top. It was a great series.

This was released what, 40 years ago? Still wonderful. It changed my view of history forever.

Or not. Personally, I’d rather “just look into this light” BOTH bezopo & lumpi. POOF! sprecht achz & bloogin’ instantaneously disappeared!! And ALL THEIR GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING GRIFT - every freaking cent - is awarded to NASA. #FundedInPerpetuity #AdAstra #NoNotYouFuckUpsShoo

oh right, massive pollution

same. also “the ring of truth” is great too

Amazing series!

Sorry for your delay, but it’s a lovely thing to rewatch. I think I’m going to try rewatching an episode every night before bed.

The best science program ever produced.

It’s also about how elders didn’t quite figure “everything” out, but that thing you think you completely independently discovered? Yeah, that was all based on very old work.

That show is the fucking best thing ever. I find a lot of non-fiction TV unwatchable because it's too slow (unless it has great photography) because I'm just thinking, "this would be so much faster reading." Not "Connections."

Excellent series!

I knew I liked you.

Agreed, thanks, bookmarked. Started watching in grad school and tried to get my sons dialed into PBS reruns a decade later. Good to see Internet Archives has them back.

Had a Science and Technology class in college where we watched an episode every Friday and discussed it the next week. Fascinating.

Funny enough, the TA who taught my intro class also said luciferase was superior to GFP. True for a narrow set of applications. But live-cell imaging (eg cancer), real-time protein tracking, drug screening, food safety testing, and water quality monitoring would not be possible with luciferase alone

I just LOVE that the dude's name was ' Shimomura'-- Like a combination of shimmer and mirror!

Tldr

Sure... or you know... they take a random batch of the food and test it for contamination so they they know the rest of the batch is safe to ship or trash it...

There are some heart cells from me in a freezer - I contributed to a research study. I do not know if any of them have been thawed out and tagged with GFP or not.

JFC

⚡️

🫠

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.

Even the smallest creature holds a secret light, waiting for a patient hand to free it. How like the soul, that glows when given room to be itself.

Good thread about the importance of fundamental science, but careful not to oversimplify/mislead. Roger Tsien did engineer colour variants for avGFP (CFP, EYFP etc), but mCherry, mOrange, mPlum are variants of DsRed/RFP from Discosoma, which isn't a jellyfish.

So good. That got you a follow. 👍🏼

🔗 This is part of the "Your Tax Dollars At Work" series on federally funded research that sounded ridiculous but generated enormous returns. Full series archive: bioniclab.substack.com/notes #YourTaxDollarsAtWork

We are, increasingly. AI drug screening, computational modeling, organ-on-chip systems all reduce animal use. But each was trained on data from empirical biology. You can't simulate what hasn't been observed. Ironically, GFP is part of the solution: it lets us study living cells without dissection.