When night falls in summer, sometimes all it takes is a glance toward a dark corner of the garden or a forest path to spot a ...

The key to their light is a chemical reaction based on a compound called luciferin, said Timothy Fallon, a biochemical geneticist at the University of California, San Diego.

The glow in Lough Hyne comes courtesy of dinoflagellates (tiny, single-celled plankton) floating near the surface of the ...

Luciferase is a group of enzymes that oxidize a substrate known as luciferin to produce light. 1 For bioluminescence, the firefly luciferase enzyme catalyzes the oxidation of D-luciferin in the ...

Luciferin is a complex substance that produces light. Luciferase is an enzyme or a chemical that helps speed up a reaction. It allows oxygen molecules to bind to luciferin.

Oxygen oxidizes the luciferin molecules, while luciferase accelerates the reaction and releases excess energy as light without generating heat. The light’s intensity, frequency, duration, and ...

Then, luciferin molecules are introduced to that sample, prompting a luciferase reaction that creates a burst of light. But this reaction produces a light signal that is both weak and short-lived.

Cypridina luciferin, a monomeric spike protein, exhibited a higher efficiency for catalytic reactions than fragment proteins, boosting the relative enzymatic turnover (kcat) values by greater than ...

Bioluminescence is a cold light chemical reaction, one that requires the presence of luciferin—a light-making compound. Some lifeforms make luciferin themselves, while others absorb it from ...