What is Bioluminescence?

Have you ever seen a firefly at night before? You probably already know that they emit light from their bodies. But have you ever wondered why and how they can do this? 

Fireflies emit light from their body in a process called bioluminescence. Bioluminescence is defined as the biochemical emission of light from organic material. Bioluminescence is typically used to warn or evade predators, detect prey, same-specie communication, and for finding mates. But how do these organisms even light up in the first place? Well, it's all in chemistry.

  It all starts with 2 chemicals, luciferin (the main component) and either the enzyme luciferase or photoprotein. In the chemical reaction of dinoflagellates, a type of unicellular algae, the interaction between luciferin and luciferase creates a substance called oxyluciferin. This oxyluciferin molecule gets in a very excited state and moves extremely fast following the chemical reaction and releases a photon after calming down to its regular state; that is how organisms that use luciferin and luciferase produce light. But how about organisms that use photoprotein instead of luciferase? Well, it's basically the same thing! When the luciferin chemically interacts with the oxygen inside photoprotein it releases energy, mainly in the form of light. Fascinatingly, the color of the light emitted depends on the specific chemical structure of the luciferin molecules. This is why fireflies emit a yellowish-orange color but the bacteria in anglerfish emit a blue color. 

That is how bioluminescence works in living organisms. To learn more information about this topic, feel free take the test linked to this. See you in the next article!