Out of the dark, into the light

Lessons in humanity learned while driving a courtesy van helped steer scientist on a path that led him out of depression

Douglas Prasher was responsible for research that led to three other scientists winning the Nobel Prize. Though his work was honored during the ceremony, at the time he had an $8.50-an-hour job driving a courtesy shuttle for a car dealership. John Gastaldo • U-T
Prasher researched a photoprotein that allows certain jellyfish species, like this aequoria victoria jellyfish, to emit light. Sierra Blakely

while preparing for work as a car dealership’s courtesy van driver in Huntsville, Ala., Douglas Prasher heard the radio announcement. The 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry had been awarded to three Americans: Osamu Shimomura of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Martin Chalfie of Columbia University and UC San Diego’s Roger Tsien.

Prasher’s first reaction? Call the station to correct the broadcaster: “You’ve mispronounced Roger Tsien’s name. It’s ‘Chen.’ ”

Weeks later, another reaction led him to make another call. Overwhelmed by despair, he parked the dealership’s van by the roadside and phoned a suicide prevention hotline.

That courtesy van driver — Dr. Douglas Prasher, Ph.D., — is a world-class biochemist. His research in the 1980s and ’90s had led to the Nobel-winning breakthroughs of Shimomura, Chalfie and Tsien. For a time, that trio’s elevation into the scientific pantheon brought welcome publicity to their former colleague and his unlikely journey from chemistry department to service department.

But when the spotlight faded, Prasher remained stuck in an $8.50-an-hour job, considering taking his own life.

“I had been depressed for quite awhile, but that day it really hit home,” he said. “If even after all that had happened, I couldn’t get a job in science, then something was wrong.”

Bad luck and bad decisions cast dark shadows across Prasher’s career, but his most celebrated scientific work involved a natural substance that sheds light. Today, he has emerged from depression and returned to science as a researcher in Tsien’s UC San Diego lab. At 61, this biochemist still lacks a Nobel Prize, but that doesn’t seem to bother him.

“Everything happens for a reason, even though we may not understand it at the time,” he said. “I’m much happier now.”


When asked how everything spun out of control, Prasher sometimes cites his childhood. Growing up in Ohio and Canada, Douglas never learned the arts of networking or self-promotion. “You just didn’t do that,” he said.

At Ohio State, he enrolled in the chemical engineering program, a subject he grew to hate. Although he hadn’t taken biology in high school, Prasher listened when a roommate suggested biochemistry as an alternative. “I was always into chemistry and I realized this was the chemistry of life — an explanation of how things work around us.

“The stuff that goes on in our bodies is just chemistry — as simple as that,” Prasher said. Then he laughed. “Well, it’s not really simple.”

No, but the complexities drew him deeper into this field. After earning his Ph.D. at Ohio State, he traveled south for postgraduate work at the University of Georgia. There, Milton Cormier introduced him to aequorin, a photoprotein that allows certain jellyfish species to emit light. Could this green fluorescent protein — this GFP — be isolated and cloned?

Shimomura and others were pondering similar questions. If you attached fluorescent proteins to molecules or slipped them inside cells, couldn’t you watch these tagged elements interact, revealing behaviors that would lead to new drugs and medical therapies, and even a more profound understanding of life itself?


