To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter 143

Some of you may have heard about this news item in the last couple of
days:  The 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Martin Chalfie,
Osamu Shimomura and Roger Tsien for their work on the gene green
fluorescent protein (GFP).  Douglas Prasher, who played a key role by
discovering the gene, and contributing it to Chalfie and Tsien, was
snubbed for the prize.  Much worse, it turns out that he is currently
not in science at all, working as a shuttle bus drive for a Toyota
dealership in Alabama.

But here is the rest of the story.

The fact that a Nobel Prize is involved gives this story glamor (and
pathos), but the story's true significance lies in its connection to the
false claims by industry lobbyists that "Johnnie Can't Do Science" and
thus the U.S. needs an expanded H-1B program to bring in scientists from
abroad.  These claims are false, and though Chalfie and Tsien are U.S.
natives, they are the exceptions, with Prasher being much more
representative.  His case illustrates everything that is wrong with our
current policies on H-1B.

The Urban Institute report released last year (along with earlier
research by others showing similar results) showed that plenty of
Americans major in math and science in college, but most don't continue
in the field.  There are two main reasons for this.  First, as the
National Research Council showed (for the computer field), pursuing a
PhD produces a net loss in lifetime income.  Second, as was discussed on
NPR when the UI report came out, there are major issues of career
security in the science field:  these days a scientist must work several
years as a post doc in addition to earning a PhD, so one typically
reaches one's early- to mid-30s before even knowing whether one will
even be able to start a career in the field, much less sustain one.  If
one has started a family by then, it's difficult to keep pushing on for
low pay and an uncertain future.

All of this ties in directly with H-1B.  The reason PhD wages aren't
worth the years of study are that the NSF, as I've stated before,
advocated bringing in foreign scientists for the express purpose of
holding down PhD salaries.  This also suppresses graduate stipends for
doctoral students, and post doc wages too.  As was pointed out in the
NPR piece by Shirley M. Malcom, head of education and human resources at
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, these low
wages, 15-year training periods, poor career prospects and so on are
direct evidence that we have an OVERsupply of scientists, not a shortage
as claimed by the lobbyists.  And again, this oversupply was
deliberately planned for by the NSF, back when it asked Congress to
establish the H-1B program. 

Prasher was a casualty of this oversupply.  There were too many people
applying for grants, and he saw that the situation was just going to get
worse, so he left the Woods Hole lab to take a "safe" job with the USDA.
Unfortunately, the funding issue continued to bite him anyway.  In his
last science job, with a NASA subcontractor in Huntsville, funding cuts
again left him unemployed.  He now works for the Toyota dealer in the
same town.

The oversupply of workers also contributes to the cutthroat nature of
the competition.  Chalfie and Tsien were able to do quite well in the
system, good for them, but as an academic I can tell you that for many
in the field, part of success comes from a willingness to throw some
elbows here and there, and play hardball.  I'm not saying that Chalfie
and Tsien necessarily have sharp elbows, but it's quite telling that
Tsien now says he was "amazed" when Prasher quite willingly give him the
gene--and maybe equally telling that Tsien stopped short of saying that
Prasher should have shared in the prize.  (Though Chalfie, to his
credit, did say, "They could've easily given the prize to Douglas and
the other two and left me out.")

At one of the science blogs discussing the Prasher case, enclosed below,
someone named Lisa brings up the H-1B connection:

   Ah, this scares me. My husband is a research scientist with the govt
   right now in plants. We had to move to Canada for two years recently
   because the US just doesn't want to hire its own citizens anymore.
   We got back here on a temp. job. This story made me cry. We are about
   to be between jobs again, and it's tough to find one. My husband has
   done some really great work in genetics, but it doesn't seem to
   matter.  I am angry at the way our nation has chewed up and spit out
   so many of its great scientists in search of cheap labor.

And again, though it makes for good newspaper copy to have a Nobel
almost-laureate discovered driving a van for $10 an hour, this sounds
painfully familiar to many readers of this e-newsletter.  One of my PhD
readers could only find work packing boxes at minimum wage--at the peak
of the dot-com boom, no less.  Another PhD reader did manual labor in a
winery.  Those "Johnnie Can't Do Science" claims by the lobbyists have a
bitter ring to them.

In the last presidential debate, moderator Bob Schiefer took it for
granted that "Johnnie" indeed can't do math and science, and sadly,
neither presidential candidate objected.  Maybe Obama and McCain, who
both strongly endorse an H-1B increase, ought to pay as much attention
to Prasher the Ex-Scientist as they did to Joe the Plumber.

I'm enclosing news articles on the Prasher case below.  I also recommend
his Wikipedia entry,

   http://www.conncoll.edu/ccacad/zimmer/GFP-ww/GFP-1.htm

and a beautiful page on GFP, at

   http://www.conncoll.edu/ccacad/zimmer/GFP-ww/GFP-1.htm
  
which has some great pictures as well as a History section explaining the
contributions made by the various players.

Norm

Saturday October 18, 2008 Cape Cod Online

By Aaron Gouveia
agouveia@capecodonline.com
October 11, 2008

Twenty years ago, Douglas Prasher was one of the driving forces behind
research that earned a Nobel Prize in chemistry this week. But today,
he's just driving.

Prasher, 57, works as a courtesy shuttle operator at a Huntsville,
Ala., Toyota dealership. While his former colleagues will fly to
Stockholm in December to accept the Nobel Prize and a $1.4 million
check, the former Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientist will
be earning $10 an hour while trying to put two of his children through
college.

"It's a cutthroat world out there," Prasher said during a phone
interview yesterday.

Despite his contributions to the groundbreaking research, a Nobel Prize
can only be shared among three people.

In 1961, Osamu Shimomura of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods
Hole discovered the green fluorescent protein that gives the Aequoria
Victoria jellyfish its glow. In the 1980s, Prasher began working with
the protein, designated as GFP, after hypothesizing the gene
responsible for the protein's fluorescent properties could be used to
help view formerly invisible molecular functions.

After the American Cancer Society gave Prasher a $220,000 grant in
1988, he set about isolating and copying the GFP gene.

That caught the attention of Martin Chalfie, another of the Nobel Prize
winners announced this week. The Columbia University researcher said
yesterday that the organism he was working with at the time was
transparent, and he hoped Prasher's work on the luminescent jellyfish
protein would provide a way for him to see its molecular functions.

Four years later, as Prasher's grant dried up and he was no longer able
to continue his own research, he voluntarily gave samples of the GFP
gene to Chalfie.

The cloned gene was also given to Roger Tsien, the third Nobel Prize
winner, who has been in the forefront of fluorescent protein research
ever since.

"(Prasher's) work was critical and essential for the work we did in our
lab," Chalfie said. "They could've easily given the prize to Douglas
and the other two and left me out."

But instead of focusing on his hard luck, Prasher said he is happy for
his former colleagues. While it was perfectly within his rights not to
share the cloned gene with others, Prasher said he felt an obligation
to give his research a chance to turn into something significant, even
if he was no longer a part of it.

"When you're using public funds, I personally believe you have an
obligation to share," Prasher said. "I put my heart and soul into it,
but if I kept that stuff, it wasn't gonna go anyplace."

David Mark Welch, assistant scientist of evolutionary biology at MBL,
said this sort of situation is a natural byproduct of working in an
industry where competition for grant money can be intense. Some grants
have 100 applications but will only fund 10 requests, Welch said. That
means competition -- even from fellow colleagues at the same
institution -- can be fierce and scientists often feel the need to keep
all unpublished research a secret.

Welch praised Prasher's actions and said many researchers are finding
it easier to obtain larger grants if they collaborate instead of
alienate. "You have to put aside any sort of personal desires to be
better than everyone else because if your grant isn't funded, you're in
trouble," he said.

Prasher knows that trouble all too well.

After stints at a U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratory and working
for NASA in Huntsville, Prasher was out of work for a year before he
took a job at the car dealership.

Prasher said he has suffered from health problems and depression, some
of which stems from being out of science for so long. But his sense of
humor remains intact.

"If Marty and Roger want to show me some gratitude, they can always
send some cash," Prasher said. "I'm accepting gifts and donations."

Prasher hopes the Nobel Prize exposure will lead to a job offer in his
field, ideally back to Falmouth, where he said he lived happily for 14
years.

Inside Edition

Genius Behind the Wheel Airdate: 10/14/2008

He looks like a regular guy with a regular job driving a shuttle van.

However, Douglas Prasher is a genius credited with helping to make one
of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the 21st century.

Three scientists just won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry thanks to
Prasher's groundbreaking research, though there was no mention made in
part of him when the award was announced last week and he won't get any
of the $1.4 million prize money.

"You know, that's life," says Prasher.

Prasher's extraordinary story began when he was studying biochemistry at
the University of Georgia. He isolated the gene that causes jellyfish to
glow in the dark.

Prasher had a hunch that his discovery could one day be used to track
the growth of tumors in cancer patients. So, when his grant ran out, he
turned his findings over to other scientists, who completed his work and
just won the Nobel Prize!

Two American scientists from Columbia University and UC San Diego and a
third U.S. based researcher from Japan celebrated the announcement with
toasts of champagne and national attention.

INSIDE EDITION caught up with Dr. Roger Tsien of UC San Diego, by phone,
and he agrees, they couldn't have done it without Douglas Prasher.

"Doug Prasher had a very important role and I think it's a shame that
Doug has not been recently in a position to do science that would use
his talents."

Prasher has fallen on tough times. He was laid off from his job at NASA,
and couldn't find another job as a scientist. In order to support his
family, he took a job driving a courtesy van at a Toyota dealership in
Huntsville for $10 per hour.

"It's hard to get real excited about what I'm doing now...it just
doesn't pay," he says.

Prasher's boss is happy to have him. His passengers can hardly believe
they have a genius driving their van.

As for Douglas Prasher, even though he didn't win the Nobel Prize, he's
looking on the bright side. "If I was a part of it, and I'd have to go
to Stockholm and get all dressed up...I hate getting dressed up," says
the unassuming man behind the wheel of a shuttle van.

Terra Sigillata

musings on medicines from the Earth

Abel Pharmboy is the nom de plume of an academic researcher and educator
who holds a PhD in Pharmacology. He writes on natural product drugs and
dietary supplements, academic career development, medical journalism
and, occasionally, making and listening to music and, with the help of
his colleague, Erleichda, wine appreciation.

Terra Sigillata is the name of the first authenticated, trademarked
drug. "Why Terra Sigillata?" will tell you more about the origin of the
blog name.


Nobel Prize heartbreak - Dr Douglas Prasher

Category: Academia o Radio/Podcast o Research funding o Science/medical
journalism o The Working Scientist
Posted on: October 9, 2008 6:59 AM, by Abel Pharmboy

You probably thought this was going to be about Dr Robert Gallo.

Driving in to lab this morning I heard Dan Charles' story on NPR's
Morning Edition about the unheralded scientist, Dr Douglas Prasher, who
first cloned the green fluorescent protein gene from Aequorea victoria
in 1992, as published in Gene. This amazing laboratory tool, you will
note, was the focus of yesterday's awarding of the 2008 Nobel Prize in
Chemistry. Prasher freely distributed the cDNA to those requesting it,
including at least two of the three recently Nobelists.

Because of funding shortfalls from both NIH and the USDA, Dr Prasher is
currently driving a courtesy shuttle for a Huntsville, Alabama,
automobile dealership.

The heartbreaking story, described by one scientist as "a staggering
waste of talent," will be available on the NPR site at 9:00 am EDT.

Very nice enterprise reporting by Dan Charles.

Comments

Thanks for this and your other excellent post on the 2008 Nobel
Chemistry Prize. From PubMed, Prasher was a co-author on at least two
key papers with Chalfie and Tsien, and his latest publication appears
to be in 1997. I haven't listened to the NPR piece yet (I'll catch it
this hour, or online after 9:00), but was the funding shortfall his
only reason for leaving science?

Posted by: Barn Owl | October 9, 2008 8:16 AM

Ah, this scares me. My husband is a research scientist with the govt
right now in plants. We had to move to Canada for two years recently
because the US just doesn't want to hire its own citizens anymore. We
got back here on a temp. job. This story made me cry. We are about to
be between jobs again, and it's tough to find one. My husband has done
some really great work in genetics, but it doesn't seem to matter. I am
angry at the way our nation has chewed up and spit out so many of its
great scientists in search of cheap labor.

Posted by: Lisa | October 9, 2008 8:37 AM

I heard the story on NPR in the car this morning and really made me
perk up - quite an astonishing story and what a great person! After not
getting funded, he worked in an NIH lab for a little while, then a NASA
institute in Alabama, and when that closed, he got a job at the local
car dealership. While he says that his savings are gone, he also sounds
cheerful and humble and happy that these guys got the Nobel.

Posted by: Coturnix | October 9, 2008 9:00 AM

This reminds me of a quote from Caddyshack (paraphrased):
"So I says to the Dali, I say, 'Hey Dali, how about a little something,
ya know, for the effort?'"

Posted by: Chemgeek | October 9, 2008 9:23 AM

It certainly seems odd that Prasher was passed over, after all he seems
to have been one of the earliest scientists to realise the potential of
GFP, and the contribution he made by sequencing it and then making the
clones available to scientists who wanted them is undeniable.

Perhaps the decision has something to do with his no longer having a
career in science. Has the Nobel ever been awarded to somebody no
longer working in the field, a related field or retired?

Posted by: Paul | October 9, 2008 9:23 AM

Slightly off topic, but I heard the NPR piece, and winced when he said
he liked interacting with people in his car dealership job because
science is loner work.

That's not really the PR image science needs ... and I have to wonder
what kind of position he had. I talk to so many people every week,
inside and outside my research group, that I sometimes can hardly get
any work done. And I'm not even faculty.

Posted by: Ambitwistor | October 9, 2008 9:49 AM

This is exactly the sort of story that should be told to young people
interested in a career in scientific research.
Ending up outside academic research is the fate of the vast majority of
those who try for that career, not a rare unfortunate result for a few
individuals like Dr Prasher.
It would be nice and fitting, however, if the other three recipients
could acknowledge him properly over the prize.

Posted by: Sigmund | October 9, 2008 10:04 AM

Thank you for bringing public attention to this travesty (in my
opinion). I fully realize that there can be some deep politics behind
the various committee's decisions on whom to bestow a Nobel Prize (cf.
the recent omission of R. Gallo), but this one just seems plain wrong.
As a research scientist I followed the development of this technology
since the paper published in Gene in 1992 (and have used many variants
of GFP in transgenic animals). To my mind it is quite clear that Doug
Prasher was the driving force behind this discovery. This is not to say
that the other individuals did not make significant contributions, but
for my money, Prasher should have been recognized in place of Marty
Chalfie.

Posted by: Marc Perry | October 9, 2008 10:10 AM

i heard the story this morning myself as well. i don't see how the
committee could have left him out. because of his generosity, they were
able to do the work which led to then ultimately receiving the nobel
prize.

Posted by: aquababie | October 9, 2008 12:00 PM

i heard the story this morning myself as well. i don't see how the
committee could have left him out. because of his generosity, they were
able to do the work which led to then ultimately receiving the nobel
prize.

Posted by: aquababie | October 9, 2008 12:03 PM

What a sooooo elitest (read that ... snotty, snobbish) statement re "a
staggering waste of talent" of Dr Douglas Prasher of Huntsville,
Alabama. The person stating this mindset of his own brain -- about Dr
Prasher's ... brain? How is it his right to make such a judgment on Dr
Prasher and, now, his daily comings and goings and thinkings and
doings? I do everything I can -- and have to ... nearly every single
day -- to make it clear that (being 16 - 1/2 years and [child -
]supporting three children through 81 months of UNinterrupted, always -
on - time, FULL payments) a secretary is a mighty fine position to have
and one of great detail, accuracy in that detail ... and (always,
always, always) accountability (read that ... integrity and humility).
How am I then, also a former scientist with a BSN, DVM and PhD who did
not have the $K$s after daily living costs, attorneys fees and
childrens support payments to reup / renew all of the annual CE credits
and degrees' licensures, I would ask this speaker, ... a staggering
waste of talent? How dare this "talker" -- with such the narcissistic,
entitled arrogance? Blue of central Iowa
http://bluemAAs.public.iastate.edu

Posted by: Blue Maas, BSN DVM PhD | October 9, 2008 12:32 PM

Quickly looking at the comment thread accumulating at the NPR site, it
looks like Dr Prasher is already being asked by some academic medical
centers to submit an application - this one from someone at the Moffitt
Cancer Center in Tampa:

http://www.npr.org/templates/community/persona.php?uid=2096660

Posted by: Abel Pharmboy | October 9, 2008 1:00 PM

Congratulations, Dr. Prasher (if you're reading this). Your
extraordinary foresight was the groundwork for the research, and I hope
you're acknowledged publicly and appropriately. We thank you for your
service to science.

Posted by: Mary | October 9, 2008 2:03 PM

Congratulations, Dr. Prasher (if you're reading this). Your
extraordinary foresight was the groundwork for the research, and I hope
you're acknowledged publicly and appropriately. We thank you for your
service to science.

Posted by: Mary | October 9, 2008 2:05 PM

To Paul: No, you don't have to be in science or be "active" to win a
Nobel.
Examples: Jack Kilby won a Nobel in Physics even though he never worked
in academic physics research, he was an engineer tinkering with
integrated circuits. And Shamu and Shimomura - who won in physics and
chemistry, respectively, this year - are retired professors.

Posted by: JonW | October 9, 2008 3:48 PM

I meant to write Nambu, not Shamu!!! Sorry :(

Posted by: JonW | October 9, 2008 3:52 PM

Doug works at Bill Penney Toyota in Huntsville.

I really hope someone heard his story and will offer him an amazing
job. He has never been anything but great to all of us that work with
him.

Posted by: Jennifer C | October 10, 2008 10:45 AM

One of the reasons why he might have been overlooked, is because only
three people can share a prize.

Posted by: Kristjan Wager | October 11, 2008 1:58 PM

We've been talking about this story over on Nature Network here.

Posted by: Austin Elliott | October 17, 2008 9:48 AM

Chalfie preyed on Prasher's weak funding position. Chalfie got the
clones as a collaboration, had members of his lab (not even himself) do
the final experiments, put himself first author in the paper published
in Science, and went around outrageously stating that it had been his
idea in the first place to use GFP. Chalfie's contribution is not
deserving of a Nobel prize. The prize should go to Prasher.

Posted by: Nobel's shame | October 17, 2008 1:20 PM

Oops - sent another comment but it seems to have got permanently hung
in the spam filters.

A read around on the net suggests the last comment from "Nobel's Shame"
is wide of the mark. Chalfie intuited what could be done with a
fluorescent protein in organisms OTHER than their parent ones (like
fluorescent jellyfish), and then showed it could be done in the
organism he worked on, C. elegans. And Prasher was a co-author on the
first paper.

That hardly sounds like him "preying" on Prasher. It sounds like -
well, like scientists collaborating.

Posted by: Austin Elliott | October 18, 2008 6:16 AM

Hi Austin, thanks for directing me to Corie Lok's discussion thread. I
also agree that Prasher was not at all preyed upon - he freely gave out
the clone and was indeed on some key papers. Jonathan Eisen posted this
quote from Prasher that exemplifies the collaborative spirit you
describe:

"When you're using public funds, I personally believe you have an
obligation to share," Prasher said. "I put my heart and soul into it,
but if I kept that stuff, it wasn't gonna go anyplace."

Posted by: Abel Pharmboy | October 18, 2008 7:18 PM


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95545761

Glowing Gene's Discoverer Left Out Of Nobel Prize
by Dan Charles

Morning Edition, October 9, 2008 · The Nobel Prize in chemistry was
awarded this week to three scientists working in the United States
with a jellyfish protein that glows in the dark. But the scientist who
found the gene for that protein, and gave it to the eventual Nobel
winners, is no longer working in the field. He now drives a shuttle
bus for an auto dealership.

The three chemistry Nobel Prize winners have advanced our
understanding of the inner workings of cells by using the jellyfish
protein to tag the tiny, intricate parts.

But to do that, back in the 1990s, those scientists first needed the
gene that creates the glowing protein.

One of the winners, Roger Tsien of the University of California, San
Diego, says he was lucky. At just the right time, a researcher named
Douglas Prasher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in
Massachusetts isolated the gene that Tsien wanted.

"So I found his phone number, called him up, and to my amazement he
was willing to give out the gene," Tsien says.

Another of the Nobel laureates, Martin Chalfie of New York's Columbia
University, also got the gene from Prasher.

But Prasher, it turns out, no longer works in science. He is now
driving a courtesy shuttle for a car dealership in Huntsville, Ala.

"I got a hard luck story," he says.

Prasher doesn't have any regrets about giving away the gene. Tsien and
Chalfie did great work, he says, which he probably couldn't have done
because the National Institutes of Health had rejected his funding
proposals.


"At that time, I knew I was going to get out of it; my funding had
already run out," Prasher says.

He went to work for a laboratory run by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, then took a job with a NASA contractor in Huntsville. But
two-and-a-half years ago, NASA cut his project and Prasher lost his
job.

He tried to find a job in science but failed. So he went to work at
the car dealership.

"I never thought I would enjoy working with people so much. 'Cause
doing science is kind of a loner thing; but doing this, I meet new
people every day, and I hear all kinds of stories, some of which I
don't need to hear. Because I'm kind of a bartender," Prasher says.

But the job does not pay enough to support his family.

"Our savings is gone; just totally gone," he says.

Prasher is still looking for a research job, but he worries that after
two-and-a-half years, his knowledge and skills may be out of date.

That's not what some of his former colleagues say. One called
Prasher's current situation a "staggering waste of talent."

In December, Tsien and Chalfie, along with Japanese researcher Osamu
Shimomura, will go to Stockholm and receive almost a half-million
dollars.

Prasher says, "If they're ever in Huntsville, they need to take me out
to dinner."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/3178845/Th..
.

The scientist, the jellyfish protein and the Nobel prize that got
away
It is the ultimate story of what might have been.
By Philip Sherwell in New York
Last Updated: 9:26PM BST 11 Oct 2008

Douglas Prasher was preparing breakfast before leaving for work at a
car dealership in Huntsville, Alabama, when he heard a report on the
radio about this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry.

The prestigious $1.4 million prize had just been awarded to three US-
based scientists working with a jellyfish protein that glows in the
dark and offers new prospects for cancer research.

The news last week stunned Mr Prasher. For if life had worked out
differently, he might also have ended up as a Nobel laureate rather
than driving people to and from the Bill Penney Toyota dealership in
the complementary shuttle.

Mr Prasher is the biochemist who discovered the gene for the protein.
But when his funds from the American Cancer Society ran out in the
early 1990s, he voluntarily passed on his findings to the eventual
Nobel winners.

Mr Prasher, 57, subsequently worked on various other government
science projects before moving to Huntsville to join a Nasa space
science research programme. But when that mission was closed down in
2006, he ended up unemployed for a year before taking the $10-an-hour
job as a shuttle driver.

"I really enjoy this work," he told The Sunday Telegraph after
dropping off a customer on Friday morning. "Science is a bit of
loner's world while here I'm dealing with people every day. The
conversations are always interesting, sometimes too interesting.

"I feel like a bartender at times. If folks talk too much about their
problems, I say I'm going to have to charge them as a counsellor, not
a driver."

The prize was jointly awarded to Roger Tsien of the University of
California and Martin Chalfie of Columbia University, who have
conducted the recent research, and Osamu Shimomura, the US-based
Japanese scientist who first isolated the glowing jellyfish protein.

Dr Tsien and Dr Chalfie have both acknowledged and praised Mr
Prasher's role in discovering the gene that creates the protein. "I
found his phone number, called him up and to my amazement he was
willing to give out the gene," Dr Tsien recalled last week.

Mr Prasher, who is married with three children, insisted that he feels
no bitterness about how things turned out. "Do I feel cheated or left
out? No, not at all. I had run out of funds and these guys showed how
the protein could be used and that was the key thing."

Nonetheless, he is now heavily in debt, has suffered from depression
and hopes that the burst of publicity about green fluorescent protein
could give him a final chance at a job back in the scientific field.

And if any of the newly-crowned Nobel winners pass through Huntsville?

"Then they get to take me out to dinner," he said. "And I choose the
restaurant."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081011/NEWS..
.

Shuttle driver reflects on Nobel snub
By Aaron Gouveia
agouv...@capecodonline.com
October 11, 2008 6:00 AM

Twenty years ago, Douglas Prasher was one of the driving forces behind
research that earned a Nobel Prize in chemistry this week. But today,
he's just driving.

Prasher, 57, works as a courtesy shuttle operator at a Huntsville,
Ala., Toyota dealership. While his former colleagues will fly to
Stockholm in December to accept the Nobel Prize and a $1.4 million
check, the former Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientist will
be earning $10 an hour while trying to put two of his children through
college.

"It's a cutthroat world out there," Prasher said during a phone
interview yesterday.

Despite his contributions to the groundbreaking research, a Nobel
Prize can only be shared among three people.

In 1961, Osamu Shimomura of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods
Hole discovered the green fluorescent protein that gives the Aequoria
Victoria jellyfish its glow. In the 1980s, Prasher began working with
the protein, designated as GFP, after hypothesizing the gene
responsible for the protein's fluorescent properties could be used to
help view formerly invisible molecular functions.

After the American Cancer Society gave Prasher a $220,000 grant in
1988, he set about isolating and copying the GFP gene.

That caught the attention of Martin Chalfie, another of the Nobel
Prize winners announced this week. The Columbia University researcher
said yesterday that the organism he was working with at the time was
transparent, and he hoped Prasher's work on the luminescent jellyfish
protein would provide a way for him to see its molecular functions.

Four years later, as Prasher's grant dried up and he was no longer
able to continue his own research, he voluntarily gave samples of the
GFP gene to Chalfie.

The cloned gene was also given to Roger Tsien, the third Nobel Prize
winner, who has been in the forefront of fluorescent protein research
ever since.

"(Prasher's) work was critical and essential for the work we did in
our lab," Chalfie said. "They could've easily given the prize to
Douglas and the other two and left me out."

But instead of focusing on his hard luck, Prasher said he is happy for
his former colleagues. While it was perfectly within his rights not to
share the cloned gene with others, Prasher said he felt an obligation
to give his research a chance to turn into something significant, even
if he was no longer a part of it.

"When you're using public funds, I personally believe you have an
obligation to share," Prasher said. "I put my heart and soul into it,
but if I kept that stuff, it wasn't gonna go anyplace."

David Mark Welch, assistant scientist of evolutionary biology at MBL,
said this sort of situation is a natural byproduct of working in an
industry where competition for grant money can be intense. Some grants
have 100 applications but will only fund 10 requests, Welch said. That
means competition even from fellow colleagues at the same
institution can be fierce and scientists often feel the need to keep
all unpublished research a secret.

Welch praised Prasher's actions and said many researchers are finding
it easier to obtain larger grants if they collaborate instead of
alienate. "You have to put aside any sort of personal desires to be
better than everyone else because if your grant isn't funded, you're
in trouble," he said.

Prasher knows that trouble all too well.

After stints at a U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratory and
working for NASA in Huntsville, Prasher was out of work for a year
before he took a job at the car dealership.

Prasher said he has suffered from health problems and depression, some
of which stems from being out of science for so long. But his sense of
humor remains intact.

"If Marty and Roger want to show me some gratitude, they can always
send some cash," Prasher said. "I'm accepting gifts and donations."

Prasher hopes the Nobel Prize exposure will lead to a job offer in his
field, ideally back to Falmouth, where he said he lived happily for 14
years.