80-year-old Osamu Shimomura of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution lab had won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Martin Chalfie of Columbia University and Roger Y. Tsien of the University of California, San Diego, for discovering a green fluorescent protein in jellyfish.

By attaching this protein to cells, scientists have found ways to track and see biological processes under a microscope that were previously invisible, such as how cancer cells spread.

"GFP technology has revolutionized what we can see at the most fundamental levels of life," Gary Borisy, director of the Marine Biological Laboratory, said in a statement. "GFP is revealing, for example, how proteins move and interact in cells."

The glowing protein, called GFP, is now an important everyday tool in biomedical labs worldwide.

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