At Friday Harbor in nineteen sixty-one,
A chemist, Osamu Shimomura, came,
He wondered why a jellyfish could glow,
A soft green ring that shimmered in the bay,
With Frank Johnson, he scooped them from the sea,
They gathered thousands by the dock each day,
He found two glowing proteins hiding there,
One made a blue light, one turned it to green.
Oh, the jellyfish glow,
Shimomura's glowing green,
So tiny cells can be seen,
Shine a blue light, and it answers green,
The jellyfish glow, the brightest green.
For years, his green glow sat upon a shelf,
And no one knew just how it could be used,
Then Martin Chalfie put it into worms,
And tiny parts of them began to glow,
Then Roger Tsien made new colours shine,
Like yellow, blue and cherry red,
In two thousand eight, the three of them,
Shared the Nobel Prize for what they'd found.
Oh, the jellyfish glow,
So tiny cells can be seen,
Shine a blue light, and it answers green,
The jellyfish glow, the brightest green.
Now scientists can watch a cell,
They follow germs and growing nerves,
With glowing green, the whole way through.
On Halloween, you carry a glowing stick,
But in a lab, a cell glows green inside,
It helps the doctors learn how sickness spreads,
Thanks to a jellyfish from the tide.
Oh, the jellyfish glow,
Shimomura's glowing green,
So tiny cells can be seen,
Shine a blue light, and it answers green,
The jellyfish glow, the brightest green.
The jellyfish glow, in the night.
