Bacterial luciferase

Microtiter plates HRP/H202/luminol AP/dioxetanes Firefly luciferin/luciferase Bacterial luciferin/luciferase Detection of enzymes and metabolites by direct or coupled enzyme reactions Determination of antioxidant and enzyme inhibitory activities Immunoassay... 

Bioluminescence can also be used as the basis for immunoassay. For example, bacterial luciferase has been used in a co-immobilized system to detect and quantify progesterone using a competitive immunoassay format (34), and other luciferase-based immunoassays have been used to quantify insulin, digoxin, biotin, and other clinically important analytes (35). 

ImmunO lSS iy. Chemiluminescence compounds (eg, acridinium esters and sulfonamides, isoluminol), luciferases (eg, firefly, marine bacterial, Benilla and Varela luciferase), photoproteins (eg, aequorin, Benilld), and components of bioluminescence reactions have been tested as replacements for radioactive labels in both competitive and sandwich-type immunoassays. Acridinium ester labels are used extensively in routine clinical immunoassay analysis designed to detect a wide range of hormones, cancer markers, specific antibodies, specific proteins, and therapeutic dmgs. An acridinium ester label produces a flash of light when it reacts with an alkaline solution of hydrogen peroxide. The detection limit for the label is 0.5 amol. 

As httle as lO " g of ATP can be detected with carefiiUy purified luciferase. Commercial luciferase contains enough residual ATP to cause background emission and increase the detection limit to 10 g (294). The method has been used to determine bacterial concentrations in water. As few as lO" cells/mL of Lscherichia coli, which contains as Httle as 10 g of ATP per cell, can be detected (294). Numerous species of bacteria have been studied using this technique (293—295). 

The biochemical mechanism of bacterial luminescence has been studied in detail and reviewed by several authors (Hastings and Nealson, 1977 Ziegler and Baldwin, 1981 Lee et al., 1991 Baldwin and Ziegler, 1992 Tu and Mager, 1995). Bacterial luciferase catalyzes the oxidation of a long-chain aldehyde and FMNH2 with molecular oxygen, thus the enzyme can be viewed as a mixed function oxidase. The main steps of the luciferase-catalyzed luminescence are shown in Fig. 2.1. Many details of this scheme have been experimentally confirmed. 

Fig. 2.1 Mechanism of the bacterial bioluminescence reaction. The molecule of FMNH2 is deprotonated at N1 when bound to a luciferase molecule, which is then readily peroxidized at C4a to form Intermediate A. Intermediate A reacts with a fatty aldehyde (such as dodecanal and tetradecanal) to form Intermediate B. Intermediate B decomposes and yields the excited state of 4a-hydroxyflavin (Intermediate C) and a fatty acid. Light (Amax 490 nm) is emitted when the excited state of C falls to the ground state. The ground state C decomposes into FMN plus H2O. All the intermediates (A, B, and C) are luciferase-bound forms. The FMN formed can be reduced to FMNH2 in the presence of FMN reductase and NADH.

The reported quantum yields of the long-chain aldehydes in the luminescence reaction catalyzed by P. fischeri luciferase are 0.1 for dodecanal with the standard I (Lee, 1972) 0.13 for decanal with the standard I (McCapra and Hysert, 1973) and 0.15-0.16 for decanal, dodecanal and tetradecanal with the standard III (Shimomura et al., 1972). Thus, the quantum yield of long-chain aldehydes in the bacterial bioluminescence reaction appears to be in the range of 0.10-0.16. 

Energy transfer to fluorescent proteins. There are marked differences among the various bacterial species and strains in terms of the in vivo luminescence spectra. The emission maxima are spread mostly in a range from 472 to 505 nm (Seliger and Morton, 1968), but one of the strains, P. fischeri Y-l, shows a maximum at 545 nm (Ruby and Nealson, 1977), as shown in Fig. 2.3. However, the in vitro luminescence spectra measured with purified luciferases obtained from the various bacterial species and strains are all similar (Amax about 490 nm). The variation in the in vivo luminescence spectra may be due to the occurrence of an intermolecular energy transfer that increases the efficiency of light emission. 

Fig. 2.4 The spectrum of bacterial luminescence measured with B. harveyi luciferase, FMN, tetradecanal and NADH, in 50 mM phosphate buffer, pH 7.0, at 0°C (dashed line from Matheson et al., 1981) and the absorption and fluorescence emission spectra of LumP (solid lines) and Rf-LumP (dotted lines) obtained from P. leiog-natbi, in 25 mM phosphate buffer, pH 7.0, containing 1 mM EDTA and 10 mM 2-mercaptoethanol, at room temperature (from Petushkov et al, 2000, with permission from Elsevier). LumP is a lumazine protein, and Rf-LumP contains riboflavin instead of lumazine in the lumazine protein. Fluorescence emission curves are at the right side of the absorption curves.

AbouKhair, N. K., Ziegler, M. M., and Baldwin, T. O. (1984). The catalytic turnover of bacterial luciferase produces a quasi-stable species of altered conformation. In Bray, R. C., et al. (eds.), Flavins Flavoproteins, Proc. Int. Symp., 8th, pp. 371-374. de Gruyter, Berlin. 

Abu-Soud, H., Mullins, L. S., Baldwin, T. O., and Raushel, F. M. (1992). Stopped-flow kinetic analysis of the bacterial luciferase reaction. Biochemistry 31 3807-3813. 

Baldwin, T. O., et al. (1987). Applications of the cloned bacterial luciferase genes luxA and luxB to the study of transcriptional promoters and terminators. In Schoelmerich, J. (ed.), Biolumin. Chemilumin., Proc. Int. Biolumin. Chemilumin. Symp., 4th, 1986, pp. 373-376. Wiley, Chichester, UK. 

Baldwin, T. O., etal. (1989). Site-directed mutagenesis of bacterial luciferase analysis of the essential thiol. J. Biolumin. Chemilumin. 4 40-48. 

Balny, C., and Hastings, J. W. (1975). Fluorescence and bioluminescence of bacterial luciferase intermediates. Biochemistry 14 4719-4723. 

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