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June 8, 2005
How to make your own lucifer
Busy reading up on mutualism between microbes and animals. So there's this squid Euprymna scolopes who lives symbiotically with some bacteria Vibrio fischeri. In layman's terms squid helps bacteria out with nutrients, bacteria make squid glow, so when he's foraging at night, the predators below don't notice him because they think he's the moon and he doesn't cast a shadow, so he surely can't be anything tasty.
Anyway, these bacteria glow due to a reaction:
A reduced flavin mononucleotide FMN.2H reacts with oxygen and long-chain aldehydes RCHO and this is all catalysed by the enzyme LUCIFERASE to result in FMN + RCOOH + water + light.
The funny thing is the nomenclature for enzymes generally goes as follows:
1.Take the product or substrate of the reaction eg. lipid's (fats to you and me)to be broken down.
2.Add an -ase.
So lipase breaks down lipids.
This can work backwards as well(just like those KISS records!), so you can work out what an enzyme does by looking at the name. Now if I'm not mistaken LUCIFERase must have something to do with lucifer aka the devil himself, but we could synthesize a devil, can we? Of course I could just be over-reacting as Lucifer is derived from the Latin words lux = light and ferous = bringer or carrier, hence light-bringer, which is a bit of an odd name for the devil, but rather appropriate for our little light reaction of the friendly bacteria.
And now you know.
Posted by kat at June 8, 2005 4:09 PM
