A.victoria jellyfish ( / Sierra Blakely image)

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 the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., 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.”

Complexities

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?

“It looked to me that GFP could be an incredible tool for cell biologists,” Prasher said, “if the fluorescence could be generated in an organism other the jellyfish.”

The American Cancer Society agreed, and in 1988 awarded Prasher a two-year grant to study GFP’s potential as a biological marker that could illuminate the actions of cancer cells. Prasher succeeded in cloning GFP cell; his paper describing this breakthrough was published in a 1992 issue of the journal Gene.


By then, Prasher had moved to Woods Hole, next door to Shimomura’s professional home. Yet the newcomer never felt at ease in this seaside Massachusetts center — and failed to forge professional or personal bonds with his fellow biochemist. He also lost touch with Columbia’s Chalfie, who had wanted to collaborate on further explorations of GFP. Feeling isolated and out of place, Prasher decided to leave Woods Hole rather than try for tenure — a decision that would have fateful consequences.

“If we had been able to work together,” Chalfie said, “I am convinced that Douglas would not have left Woods Hole and would have gotten tenure. But our timing was off.”

In 1992, he moved to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where explored everything from Med flies to sudden oak death. But then a hostile supervisor and a self-described “mild” heart attack led Prasher to move on. In 2004, he landed at a NASA contractor in Alabama, researching how to keep astronauts healthy on long space voyages.

Two years later, NASA’s director eliminated that project and Prasher’s job.


Unwilling to uproot his three school-age children one more time, he sought work in the Huntsville area.

“I couldn’t find anything,” he said. “Anything.”

Except, that is, an entry-level job at a car dealership. “I jumped at that chance because I knew I could use it to make contacts — I might be able to meet people who could help me,” Prasher said. “Plus, the van was air-conditioned — and that is really important in Huntsville.”

But some of his peers wondered. Why had this world-class scientist lost his job?


Hearing these murmurs, Chalfie bristled. “I just want to get this clear,” he said. “He didn’t lose his job because he is a bad scientist. He lost his job because of a political decision.”

And if Prasher refused to relocate, choosing to stay in Huntsville for his kids’ sake? “That,” Chalfie said, “makes him one of the best fathers in the world.”

Lessons in humanity

The Nobel Prizes are meant to honor humankind’s highest achievements. The 12 laureates honored in 2008 had defused international conflicts, made possible new treatments for cervical cancer and HIV, plumbed matter’s tiniest building blocks and analyzed the forces behind global fortunes. While each Prize is limited to no more than three recipients, laureates are urged to invite family and close colleagues to the festivities.

Tsien and Chalfie invited Prasher and his wife, the scientist Virginia Eckenrode. “It would have been a travesty to not have Douglas participate in that celebration,” Chalfie said. “It was not us doing him a special kindness.”


The couple flew first class to Stockholm, where they were treated to fine dining — “we had a tablecloth at every meal and didn’t touch any plastic ware” — and finer thoughts.

Some of the latter were familiar. Tsien’s official Nobel lecture cited a fourth contributor: Prasher, who had unselfishly shared his cloned GFP gene with Tsien and Chalfie.

From these heights, Prasher returned to Alabama, where his job taught some less noble truths about human nature. At the wheel of the shuttle, Prasher was berated by clients who saw him as a mindless drone. Others used the van as a mobile confessional, spilling private and often painful details about family, health, jobs. “There are many, too many, people out there who are carrying some heavy burdens,” Prasher said. “And that’s what the 1 percent doesn’t understand.”

His own disappointments mounted, compounded by a long struggle with depression. At his lowest, Prasher made his one and only call to the Huntsville suicide hotline.


It did not go as he had expected.

“The person you need to talk to,” he was told, “is not here right now. You’ll have to call back.”

“This is not supposed to happen!” Prasher sputtered.

That tense exchange left him upset, baffled — and, despite himself, amused. “That shook me up so much, I think it got me out of that situation.”


Driving the shuttle, while a blow to his pride and a drain on the family’s finances, had taught him a valuable lesson: Everyone has troubles. His own story was unique — not many auto dealership employees are honored guests at the Nobel ceremonies — but a broader sense his was a common tale. In 2008 and ’09, many of his passengers were dissatisfied in their jobs and struggling to pay their bills. Better, he decided, to face these difficulties with humor and patience.

And, slowly, Prasher’s luck turned. After three years with the dealership, he won a research job in Huntsville. Then in spring 2012, Tsien called from La Jolla, renewing an offer he had made several times.

This time, Prasher listened. His children were now out of school. While he still had misgivings — “I wasn’t crazy about moving to California,” the native Midwesterner said — he set them aside and drove cross-country.

Almost a year later, he seems to have adjusted. As part of Tsien’s team of 20-odd scientists, he’s enjoying his work. “Roger’s group is a great group,” he said, “so stimulating.”


In a laboratory on the edge of the medical school’s campus, Prasher is investigating new problems in cell biology. Thanks to his years at the wheel of a Toyota van — his Sienna sabbatical — he brings a new attitude to the task: “I’m certainly much less serious than I used to be. I am constantly trying to bring humor into the situation.”

That’s good, because the work can be frustrating. These days, Prasher is trying to design a computer program that can sort vast numbers of genes. He’ll use that tool to seek properties that are literally one-in-a-million, or what he calls “a low probability event.”

Given his career path, he’s something of an expert in that field.