A description of how GFP was first extracted is at [1] and includes a custom-made "jellyfish cutting machine" capable of processing 600 rings an hour, and harvesting and processing 50,000 jellyfish to create just a single milligram of purified aequorin, with multiple milligrams needed to conduct experiments required to isolate/describe the compounds of interest. It took the scientists 5 years to reach the point where they had discovered the chemical structures and understood what they'd extracted from the goop of 50,000+ jellyfish.

A video tutorial at [2] then explains what to do next once GFP has been obtained from commercial sale and use of modern cloning, to skip the need to own a jellyfish cutting machine. E.g. need an antibiotic to extract the 1% of e.coli which will end up being modified vs. 99% of e.coli that won't be changed by presence of GFP.

To the point of the DavidRBellamy X thread, isn't the suggestion that an LLM wouldn't know whether it's worthwhile extracting some substance from the stomach of a crocodile, or from the beak of a penguin that only lives in Antarctica? And that much of the difficulty rests with hard physical work of the equivalent of cutting 600 rings an hour off jellyfish, for 50,000+ jellyfish, and conducting experiments to isolate and figure out the use of an extracted compound. Or ordering some obscure chemical compound from a supplier that is normally produced at a rate of 1mg/year and instead the LLM wants to order 1kg all of a sudden, raising eyebrows about why someone might be making the order.

[1] https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/shimomura_lecture...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibG9lmuXAEk