Firefly Luciferin and Oxyluciferin

The live fireflies are dried over calcium chloride in a vacuum desiccator, and then their lanterns are separated by hand. An acetone powder prepared from the dried lanterns is extracted with boiling water. The cooled aqueous extract is extracted with ethyl acetate at pH 3.0, and the ethyl acetate layer is concentrated under reduced pressure. The concentrated luciferin is adsorbed on a column of Celite-Fuller s earth mixture. The column is washed with water-saturated ethyl acetate, and eluted with alkaline water at pH 8.0-8.5. The aqueous eluate of luciferin is adjusted to pH 3.0 with HCl and luciferin is 

Properties of luciferin. The crystals are microscopic needles, which melt with decomposition at 205-210°C (Bitler and McElroy, 1957). It is a quite stable luciferin compared with some other luciferins, such as Cypridina luciferin and the luciferins of krill and dinoflagellates. It is not significantly affected by lOmM H2SO4 and lOmM NaOH at room temperature in air. The absorption spectral data of luciferin are shown in Fig. 1.3 (McElroy and Seliger, 1961). The molar absorption coefficient of the 328 nm peak in acidic solutions and that of the 384 nm peak in basic solutions are both 18,200 (Morton et al., 1969). Luciferin is fluorescent, showing an emission maximum at 537 nm in both acidic and basic conditions, although the intensity of the fluorescence is lower in acidic solution than in basic solution (fluorescence quantum yields 0.62 in basic condition, and 0.25 in acidic condition Morton et al., 1969). The chemical synthesis 

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