Luciferyl sulfate

Renilla luciferin and luciferyl sulfate. Luciferyl sulfate is extracted from the organisms with methanol. The extract is concentrated, defatted with benzene, and the aqueous layer is extracted with ethyl acetate. Luciferyl sulfate in the extract is purified by chromatography on a column of Sephadex LH-20 (Hori et al., 1972 Inoue et al., 1977a). Free luciferin is obtained by heating the sulfate in 0.1 N HC1 at 90° C for 50 sec, followed by extraction with ethyl acetate. The luciferin of Renilla thus obtained was found to be identical with coelenterazine (Inoue et al., 1977a Hori et al., 1977). 

The in vivo luminescence of Renilla. One specimen of Renilla miilleri (about 6 g when contracted) contains approximately 2 nmol of luciferyl sulfate (coelenterazine enol-sulfate) plus 0.8 nmol of coelenterazine bound to the binding protein (Shimomura and Johnson, 1979b). The sulfate is considered to be a storage form of coelenterazine, and can be converted into free coelenterazine by luciferin sul-fokinase in the presence of 3 5 -diphosphoadenosine (Cormier et al., 1970) or by an acid treatment as already mentioned. 

Cormier, M. J., Hori, K., and Karkhanis, Y. D. (1970). Studies on the bioluminescence of Renilla reniformis. VII. Conversion of luciferin into luciferyl sulfate by luciferin sulfokinase. Biochemistry 9 1184-1189. 

Inoue, S., et al. (1977a). Complete structure of Renilla luciferin and luciferyl sulfate. Tetrahedron Lett., pp. 2685-2688. 

Renilla luciferin was converted to luciferyl sulfate (204) by treatment of the diacetate (203) with sulfur trioxide in pyridine followed by removal of the acetyl group with ammonia (77TL2685). 

Inoue, S., H. Kakoi, M. Murata, T. Goto, and O. Shimomura Complete Structure of Renilla Luciferin and Luciferyl Sulfate. Tetrahedron Letts 1977, 2685. 

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