Ieeekkk jellyfish!

when my sister was here, we went to the boston aquarium. that was the first and the last time. it was over-over crowded, the building as old, dark and depressing and the entrance fee high (even though we had discount through work). the only thing i liked were the jellyfish.. :) jellyfish have no heart, bones, eyes, brain or heart, and are made up of 95% water, yet they are able to kill other animals, in some instances even human.

the other amazing thing is that they have green fluorescent proteins (GFP); so they emit light. we saw some tiny jellyfish that were emitting many different colors of light. they were in a corner of the aquarium, and not many seemed to notice them. i watched them for quite a while, so beautiful! unfortunately, the pictures were crap (you thus have to visit the awful aquarium yourself, just to see them!). nowadays, GFP is widely used in laboratories as it is a very useful tool in microscopy. the people who discovered and developed GFP, received the nobel prize in chemistry in 2008.
by now, scientists have made many different colors of fluorescent protein. here you can see a plate of bacteria, all expressing another color of fluorescent protein! science can be fun.... ;)
enough lecturing... good night!