Light from the Living
Firefly season! No, not the show, that would be great too, but the bugs! The light show that is occurring starting…now, or maybe, …now, or, well, soon anyway. Side note: Okay, not true bugs either, true bugs, order Hemiptera include stink bugs and the like. Fireflies are insects in the order Coleoptera, along with the rest of the beetles. The insect order with the most species. The impetus for this blog post is a book on darkness. I’m reading this book as part of my science geek book club. And the author, though they marveled at the light show, did not dive into the science of light creation by fireflies; I’m aghast. When organisms produce light, it’s called bioluminescence. The reaction requires two key chemicals: Luciferin, the substrate that actually produces light, and either luciferase (an enzyme) or a photoprotein. The color of the glow depends on the arrangement of luciferin molecules. There is no single luciferin molecule. Marine organisms like dinoflagellates...