Includes bibliographical references and index.

[This book is about a] new area of biotechnology that will help us understand cancer, create new products, improve agriculture, and combat terrorism. For more than 160 million years, green fluorescent protein has existed in one species of jellyfish. In 1994 it was cloned, giving rise to a host of useful and potentially revolutionary applications in biotechnology. Today, researchers are using this ancient glowing protein to pursue exciting new discoveries, from tracking the process of bacterial infection to detecting chemical and biological agents planted by terrorists. [The author] begins with an overview of the many uses of these glowing genes to kill and image cancer cells, monitor bacterial infections, and light up in the presence of pollution. He then discusses the biological reasons that glowing proteins first evolved in jellyfish and fireflies, and looks at the history of bioluminescence and the dedicated scientists who devoted their careers to explaining this phenomenon. [The author] next turns to the serious, and not-so-serious, uses of fluorescent proteins.-Dust jacket.

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