Luciferases
Luciferases are enzymes that produce light when they oxidize their substrate. The gene for the most common luciferase comes from the firefly, but luciferases from other animals such as the sea pansy Renilla reniformis, the copepod Gaussia princeps, and the ostracod Cypridina noctiluca are also used as reporters. When a luciferase is fused to a protein of interest, its expression can be measured very accurately using a luminometer. The firefly luciferase reaction requires its substrate luciferin, plus adenosine triphosphate (ATP), O2, and Mg2+. The Renilla and Gaussia luciferases use coelenterazine as their substrates; Cypridina uses its own luciferin as a substrate. Luciferases are commonly used to report the expression level of proteins to which they are fused.
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