Luciferases of Luminous Beetles: Evolution, Color Variation, and Applications

摘要

The biochemical basis of beetle luminescence is unrelated evolutionarily to otherbioluminescent systems that have been characterized at a molecular level, such as of marine invertebrates (e.g. Aequorea or Varguia) or bacteria. To advance the study of the beetle system. cDNA's coding several luciferases have been cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli. Cells expressing the cDNA clones can be induced for luminescence when the substrate, luciferin, is supplied to the growth medium. The physical and enzymatic properties of the beetle luciferases synthesized in E. coli were found to be essentially identical with native enzymes extracted from beetle light organs. This equivalence of enzyme derived from native and recombinant sources indicates that beetle luciferases are homomeric enzymes without substantial covalent modification of the primary translation product (e.g. proteolytic cleaves or glycosylations).