BACKGROUND The bacterial luciferase (lux) gene cassette consists of five genes (luxCDABE) whose protein products synergistically generate bioluminescent light signals exclusive of supplementary substrate additions or exogenous manipulations. Historically expressible only in prokaryotes, the lux operon was re-synthesized through a process of multi-bicistronic, codon-optimization to demonstrate f...

Ca2+-regulated photoproteins are members of the EF-hand calcium-binding protein family. The addition of Ca2+ produces a blue bioluminescence by triggering a decarboxylation reaction of protein-bound hydroperoxycoelenterazine to form the product, coelenteramide, in an excited state. Based on the spatial structures of aequorin and several obelins, we have postulated mechanisms for the Ca2+ trigge...

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are crucial elements in mammalian signal transduction, and are considered to represent potent drug targets. We have previously developed a GPCR assay system in cultured cells based on complementation of split fragments of click beetle (Pyrearinus termitilluminans) luciferase. The interaction of GPCRs with its target, β-arrestin, resulted in strong emission of...

introduction: gene expression and purification of luciferases from the firefly, lampyris turkestanicus, and optimization of cellular atp measurements were performed. methods: cdna encoding luciferases from lampyris turkestanicus was transferred from pqe30 vector into pet28a expression vector and pltu28 was built. newly constructed vector was expressed in e. coli xl1 blue and the recombinant luc...

abstract soil contamination with heavy metals is a serious problem in all over the world. soils are contaminated by many different sources of heavy metals. currently different methods are used by researchers for identifying heavy metal contamination. assessing soil metal toxicity with bacterial bioluminescence is one of the new techniques. in this study, different concentrations of zinc and cop...

Förster resonance energy transfer within a protein-protein complex has previously been invoked to explain emission spectral modulation observed in several bioluminescence systems. Here we present a spatial structure of a complex of the Ca(2+)-regulated photoprotein clytin with its green-fluorescent protein (cgGFP) from the jellyfish Clytia gregaria, and show that it accounts for the bioluminesc...