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Alithographica — Science Fact Friday: Luciferin
#biology #bug #entomology #firefly #gif #glow #illustration #insect #lightning #science #scientific #scientificillustration #text
Published: 2018-06-15 23:17:20 +0000 UTC; Views: 1493; Favourites: 82; Downloads: 18
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Description
The specific color produced by this reaction depends on the exact structure of the luciferase, which can vary slightly from species to species.
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Comments: 9
Didnt know fireflies could be THIS cool! WOW a @
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Yay, bioluminescence! 
I never knew luciferen has to be deprived of oxygen to activate; does this influence surrounding cells negatively, being starved of oxygen? And since luciferen is broken down in the process, I take it more has to be produced in order for the organism to keep emitting light; which implies that the production must be quite fast in order for a firefly to keep flashing most of the night.
I would love to do research on this one day to see if this process can be scaled up to industrial levels. Who knows, we could invent bioluminescent streetlamps!
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It'd be super cool if it could scale! I want firefly lights.
I couldn't find a good answer to your questions, I'm curious too. I suspect the surrounding cells feel it more as a hiccup than full oxygen starvation? Like OOP theregoestheoxy-oh it's back.
It also appears that oxyluciferin (the luciferin with oxygen that produces the light) can be converted back into regular luciferin with another chemical pathway , so it's more of a recycling rather than continual production. (It's 1am and this came from brief Googling though so I could be wrong lol.)
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Fireflies in a bottle as a high-efficiency lighting technology. Who knew?
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Package them individually for LEDs!
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