Factors Required for Bioluminescence

The way that the aldehyde requirement was discovered by Cormier and Strehler is extraordinary and noteworthy. First, they found that a boiled bacterial extract stimulated luminescence when it was added to a weakly luminescing NADH-activated bacterial extract. They thought that the stimulation was due to certain substances associated with the cell debris existing in the extract. Thus, they tested the extracts of various animal tissues in the hope of finding a substance that would 

In addition to hexadecanal, Cormier and Strehler (1953) discovered that homologous aldehydes, such as decanal and dodecanal, were also active in stimulating bacterial luminescence. Thus, they showed that bacterial luminescence requires a saturated long-chain aldehyde, but the specific aldehyde that is actually involved in the in vivo luminescence remained unknown for the next 20 years. 

Since then, tremendous efforts have been made to elucidate the mechanism of this complex, multi-component luminescence reaction 

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