Bioluminescence, the phenomenon of light production by living organisms, occurs in forms …

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Biochemical mechanism of bacterial bioluminescence
• Genetic regulation of bacterial bioluminescence
• Why do bacteria emit light?
• The problem of the early evolution of bioluminescence systems
• Using luminescent marine bacteria in aquatic biotechnology
• Concluding remarks
• References

The reaction of bacterial luminescence is catalyzed by luciferase, an enzyme composed of two subunits, called α and β (Belas et al. 1982). The luciferase substrates are long-chain aldehydes and FMNH2. The reaction leads to the oxidation of FMNH2 to FMN and the oxidation of the aldehydes to organic (fatty) acids. A quantum of light is an additional product of this reaction, which can be summarized as follows:

RCHO + FMNH₂ + O₂ → RCOOH + FMN+H₂O + hν

The fatty acids produced in the reaction catalyzed by luciferase are subsequently reduced to aldehydes by a specific reductase. In the same reaction, NADPH + H+ is converted to NADP+ and ATP is hydrolyzed to ADP (Ziegler & Baldwin 1981). FMNH2, which is necessary for the luminescence reaction (see above), is generated from FMN by NAD(P)H–FMN oxidoreductase (Jabłoński & DeLuca 1978).

As can be deduced from the above description, bioluminescence is an energy-consuming reaction. In fact, for light emission bacteria may use up to 20% of the total cellular energy (Nealson & Hastings 1979, Bassler & Silverman 1995).