What are Some Bioluminescent Animals?

Luminescent creatures are those that can emit light themselves in nature. Light-emitting organisms include fish, insects, algae, and plants. Bioluminescence is a biological communication behavior. Can be divided into active lighting and passive lighting.

Luminescent organisms are organisms that emit light. There are many types of organisms that have the ability to emit light in nature. From the simplest bacteria, protozoa to plants, invertebrates, and fish, these organisms secrete a substance that can emit light or have cells that emit light.

There are 538 genera in 30 classes in the world. Bioluminescence inspired humans to study from an engineering perspective, simulating this kind of fluorescent phenomenon with extremely high luminous efficiency and little heat production. In the military, observing the sudden outbreak of luminous marine animals can determine whether there are military installations and other types of hostile targets under water ^[1]

People have discovered that different creatures emit different colors of light. All plants emit a very dim red light after sunlight exposure. Microorganisms generally emit a light blue or green light, and some insects emit yellow light. Carefully divide the light into two categories. One type is passive light, such as plants. Those weak red lights are just excess light that fails to participate in photosynthesis. Whether this light has biological significance for plants is still Mystery, but the general view is that this light is meaningless, like painted with

Luminescence is a biological behavior, specifically a biological communication. Let's take a look at what uses active light has for luminous organisms.

Proposed by Dubois in the laboratory in 1885

Above we mentioned that biological active light is ultimately a biological one.

In the field of bioluminescence, the most commonly accepted luminous phenomenon is the luminous bioluminescence represented by the flash of fireflies. This luminescence system is the prototype of various enzymatic processes, from marine bacteria to large luminous beetles in South America, all of which produce light. Luminescence of luminous organisms refers to a kind of high-efficiency cold light emission. For the purpose of survival, these organisms use bioluminescence to make them compete more effectively in their environment. Bioluminescence exists in many terrestrial organisms, but the most common is in the ocean, especially in the deep ocean, where almost all species of organisms can emit light, and the largest bioluminescence group is counted as coelenterates. These creatures not only have relatively strong luminescence, but also have clear physiological functions. They are courtship (firefly tail luminescence), predation (ankang fish head beard luminescence), and means of defense or deceiving the enemy (aquatic bioluminescence). Studies have found that bioluminescence has the following characteristics: The color range of bioluminescence is very wide, from the red light emitted by the railway borer, to the characteristic dark blue light emitted by most marine life; oxygen is an essential factor in almost all bioluminescence systems; Bioluminescence is caused by a chemical reaction between "luciferase" and "luciferin"; all bioluminescence reactions appear to be enzyme substrate type reactions, but with varying degrees of complexity, some bioluminescence reactions involve three or 4 substrates, while other bioluminescence reactions even require systems of 3 or 4 enzymes.

The basic reactions of various luminescent bioluminescence have been understood, and some new progress has been made in this field, such as recombinant luciferase in vitro and expression in E. coli using genetic engineering techniques; artificial synthesis of luciferin; in vitro simulation of bacteria The luminescence system has been successful; bacterial luminescence genes have been proposed, and they have also been expressed in E. coli using genetic engineering methods. The aequorin has been isolated and purified, and the primary structure is clear. Because the quantum efficiency of bioluminescence is extremely high, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to study the transformation of bioluminescence energy. Luminescent proteins that have been widely used in recent years, such as GFP, YFP, CFP, etc., are based on the principle of spontaneous luminescence from animals, thus providing new means for biomedical research ^[2] .