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From Proteopedia

Green fluorescent protein (GFP) is a bioluminescent polypeptide consisting of 238 residues isolated from the body of Aequorea victoria jellyfish.^[1] GFP converts the blue chemiluminescent of aequorin in the jellyfish into green fluorescent light.^[2] It remains unclear why these jellyfish use fluorescence, why green is better than blue, or why they produce a separate protein for green fluorescence as opposed to simply mutating the present aequorin to shift its wavelength,^[3] but in the laboratory, GFP can be incorporated into a variety of biological systems in order to function as a marker protein. Since its discovery in 1962, GFP has become a significant contributor to the research of monitoring gene expression, localization, mobility, traffic, interactions between various membrane and cytoplasmic proteins, as well as many others. (more...)