Bioluminescence: D-Luciferin as Substrate

Bioluminescence is a natural phenomenon found in many lower forms of life (Deluca, 1978, Deluca and McElroy, 1986, Herring, 1986). Naturally occurring bioluminescent systems differ with regard to the structure and function of enzymes and cofactors as well as in the mechanism of the light-emitting reactions (Burr, 1985). Due to its high sensitivity, firefly(Photinus pyralis)bioluminescence has been used for many years for the sensitive determination of ATP (Lundin et al., 1976). More recently, further highly sensitive bioluminescent and chemiluminescent methods have become available for many different analytes (Kricka et al., 1984; Wood, 1984; Gould and Subramani, 1988; Kricka, 1988). Recently bioluminescent detection of nucleic acid hybridization was reported (Hauber and Geiger, 1988; 1989). Bioluminescent reporter gene assays have been introduced in molecular biology as helpful tools for gene expression (De Wet et al., 1987; Wood et al., 1989).