The Glow-worm Arachnocampa

The order Diptera (flies) contains the glow-worms Arachnocampa and Orfelia. The bioluminescence systems of dipterans do not utilize firefly luciferin in their light-emitting reactions, differing from the bioluminescence systems of coleopterans. In dipterans, it is extremely intriguing that the bioluminescence system of Arachnocampa appears different from that of Orfelia-. the former luminescence is activated by ATP, whereas the latter luminescence is stimulated by DTT but not by ATP. 

The glow-worm Arachnocampa is distributed in New Zealand and Australia. The larvae emit blue light continuously from their light 

The luciferin-luciferase reaction of Arachnocampa was first demonstrated by Wood (1993), by mixing a cold-water extract and a cooled hot-water extract. The cold-water extract was prepared with 27 mM Tricine, pH 7.4, containing 7mM MgSC 4, 0.2 mM EDTA, 10% glycerol and 1% Triton X-100, and incubated with 1 mM ATP on ice for 18 hr. The hot-water extract was prepared by heating the cold water extract before the addition of ATP at 98°C for 5 min. The luminescence reaction was performed in the presence of 1 mM ATP. 

Extraction and purification of luciferin and luciferase (Viviani etal., 2002a) To isolate luciferin, the lanterns of the Australian A. flava were homogenized in hot 0.1 M citrate buffer, pH 5, and the mixture was heated to 95°C for 5 min. The mixture was acidified to pH 2.5-3.0 with HCl, and luciferin was extracted with ethyl acetate. Upon thin-layer chromatography (ethanol-ethyl acetate-water, 5 3 2 or 3 5 2), the active fraction of luciferin was fluorescent in purple (emission Lav 415 nm when excited at 290 nm). To isolate the luciferase, the cold-water extract prepared according to Wood (1993 see above) was chromatographed on a column of Sephacryl S-300. On the same 

Luminescence reaction (Viviani et al., 2002a) The luciferin-luciferase luminescence reaction was carried out in 0.1 M Tris-HCl, pH 8.0, containing 2mM ATP and 4mM Mg2+. Mixing luciferase with luciferin and ATP resulted in an emission of light with rapid onset and a kinetically complex decay. Further additions of fresh luciferase, after the luminescence has decayed to about 10% of its maximum value, resulted in additional luminescence responses similar to the initial one (Fig. 1.15). According to the authors, the repetitive light emission occurred in consequence of the inhibition of luciferase by a reaction product, as seen in the case of the firefly system (McElroy et al., 1953). The luminescence spectrum showed a peak at 487nm (Fig. 1.16). 

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