Abstract
Bioluminescence is often called Living Light because it is encountered as the emission of light by certain animals (Harvey, 1940). A more scientific definition is that bioluminescence is light emission of high efficiency that occurs from certain organisms and that serves a biologically significant purpose for that organism. This definition is made to include the fact that bioluminescence also occurs in plants and fungi, and in bacteria. The definition excludes the very weak light emission that is observed in many actively metabolizing cells. We call that biological chemiluminescence and the reader is referred elsewhere for a discussion of that subject (Slawinska and Slawinski, 1985).
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Lee, J. (1991). Bioluminescence: Biochemistry for Fun and Profit. In: Valenzeno, D.P., Pottier, R.H., Mathis, P., Douglas, R.H. (eds) Photobiological Techniques. NATO ASI Series, vol 216. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-3840-0_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-3840-0_19
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