Chemiluminescence — An Ultrasensitive Analytical Tool in Medicine and Biotechnology

Abstract

Walk out in one of the quiet Welsh valleys on a warm summer’s night and you might be lucky enough to see the bright green glow of a female beetle. This is the European glow-worm (Figure 1) trying to attract a mate. Such luminous phenomena are rare on land, but are much more common in the sea. In fact, animal light plays a major role in the ecology of the deep oceans, where as many as nine out of ten of all the fish may be luminous⁷. Here we find the extraordinary angler fish with its luminous lure containing a culture of bacteria, and the remarkable Malacosteus with its two pairs of light organs, one emitting blue, the other red, light (Figure 2). There are also many invertebrate examples of living light, including starfish, shrimps, tunicates and jellyfish. The sources of this light are chemical reactions within specialised cells in the animal.