Ubiquitous in the world’s oceans, dinoflagellates are capable of fantastic displays of bright-blue bioluminescence. This luminosity is a consequence of the oxidation of an open-chain tetrapyrrole, dinoflagellate luciferin (LH2), by the enzyme dinoflagellate luciferase (LCF). While many other bioluminescence systems are well understood, the reaction mechanism of LCF remains enigmatic. A comprehe...

Video images of biohiminescence were recorded in situ during a 1985 study of the midwater environment of the Monterey Canyon, using a single-person, untethered submersible. Gelatinous organisms were responsible for the most brilliant bioluminescent displays, often exhibiting elaborate kinetics in response to mechanical stimulation. Images of bioluminescent displays recorded from identified orga...

Effective and targeted delivery of cells to injured organs is critical to the development of cell therapies. However, currently available in vivo cell tracking methods still lack sufficient sensitivity and specificity. We examined, therefore, whether a highly sensitive and specific bioluminescence method is suitable to noninvasively image the organ distribution of administered mesenchymal stem ...

Bioluminescence microscopy has revealed that gene expression in individual cells can respond differently to the same stimulus. To understand this phenomenon, it is important to sequentially observe the series of events from cellular signal transduction to gene expression regulated by specific transcription factors derived from signaling cascades in individual cells. However, these processes hav...

Spectrally resolved bioluminescence optical tomography is an approach to recover images of, for example, Luciferase activity within a volume using multiwavelength emission data from internal bioluminescence sources. The underlying problem of uniqueness associated with nonspectrally resolved intensity-based bioluminescence tomography is demonstrated and it is shown that using a non-negative cons...

Bioluminescence in the midshipman fish, Porichthys notatus from the Santa Barbara coastal region, was quantified from onset through the first two years of life. Maximum light emission was 2.5 x 109 photons s-1 upon leaving the nest and reached 2.0 x 1010 photons s-1 within the first year. These intensities may be sufficient for counterillumination in moon or starlight over most of the depth ran...

The bioluminescence colours of firefly luciferases are determined by assay conditions and luciferase structure. Owing to red light having lower energy than green light and being less absorbed by biological tissues, red-emitting luciferases have been considered as useful reporters in imaging technology. A set of red-emitting mutants of Lampyris turkestanicus (Iranian firefly) luciferase has been...

Compartmentalization of specialized functions to discrete locales is a fundamental theme of eucaryotic organization in cells. We report here that bioluminescence of the dinoflagellate alga Gonyaulax originates in vivo from discrete subcellular loci that are intrinsically fluorescent. We demonstrate this localization by comparing the loci of fluorescence and bioluminescence as visualized by imag...

Three novel coelenterazine (CTZ) derivatives with extension at the C-6 position of the imidazopyrazinone structure show significant bioluminescence emission with known renilla luciferase variants, indicating a promising method to develop CTZ derivatives with superior optical properties compared to hitherto reported compounds.