Light emission miracle in the sea and preeminent applications of bioluminescence in recent new biotechnology

Abstract

Bioluminescence is referred to the light emission by a living organism due to a specific biochemical reaction. This interesting feature of the organisms could highly influences behavioral and ecosystem dynamics. Luminescence, mostly observed in marine species, is generally higher in deep-living genera than in benthic or shallow organisms. However, among creatures living in land, fireflies, beetles, springtails and fungi have shown some bioluminescent activities. Classically, the emission of light is catalyzed by luciferase from a substrate. Interestingly, light-emitting organisms are more abundant and widespread in marine than terrestrial environments. Novel tools derived from understanding bioluminescent reactions have led to countless valuable applications in modern biotechnology and biochemical engineering. Here, we overview some main properties bioluminescence in marine organism from bacteria to fishes following the latest advances and new discoveries of state-of-the-art bioluminescent tools in molecular biology, bioluminescent bioassays and imaging. The overview showed available and wide biotechnological tools of bioluminescence take advantage of its high detectability, high sensitive, low toxic and quantum efficiency which make wide usage as reporter of many biological functions in different fields, such as studying bacterial pathogens, ecotoxicology, food toxicity, tracking cells of interest in vivo, protein–protein interactions, gene expression and circadian rhythms. With the recent invention of luminescent reporters, future possibilities for the development of additional reporter applications are promising.