Crystal Jelly

Aequorea victoria, the crystal jelly of the North American Pacific coast, seen from below, with a small hitchhiking amphipod near its center. In daylight it looks like clear glass; its glow comes from a ring of tiny light organs around the rim of the bell. A protein called aequorin makes blue light, and a second protein, green fluorescent protein, turns it green. Osamu Shimomura collected thousands of these jellies at Friday Harbor, Washington, to isolate both, and GFP, now used to tag cells in labs worldwide, earned him a share of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.