Effects of ATP and Mg2+ concentrations on bioluminescence reaction of luciferase (Photinus pyralis) were investigated by home-made luminometer. The Michaelis constants of the enzyme for ATP and Mg2+ obtained from the Lineweaver-Burk graph, were 61.9 mM ±3.3 mM and 251.6mM ± 39.0mM...

SpyTag can spontaneously form a covalent isopeptide bond with its protein partner SpyCatcher. Firefly luciferase from Photinus pyralis was cyclized in vivo by fusing SpyCatcher at the N terminus and SpyTag at the C terminus. Circular LUC was more thermostable and alkali-tolerant than the wild type, without compromising the specific activity. Structural analysis indicated that the cyclized LUC i...

By overexpression of modified Escherichia coli 23S rRNAs from multicopy plasmids, ribosomes were prepared that contained mutations in two regions (2447-2450 and 2457-2462) of 23S rRNA. Following mutagenesis and selection, two clones with mutations in the 2447-2450 region (peptidyltransferase center) and six with mutations in the 2457-2462 region (helix 89) were characterized. The mutations were...

Luciferase reporter constructs are widely used for analysis of gene regulation when characterizing promoter and enhancer elements. We report that the recently developed codon-modified Renilla luciferase construct included as an internal standard for cotransfection must be used with great caution with respect to the amount of DNA transfected. Also, the dual-luciferase reporter vectors encoding P...

Understanding luciferase enzymology and the structure of compounds that modulate luciferase activity can be used to improve the design of luminescence-based assays. This review provides an overview of these popular reporters with an emphasis on the commonly used firefly luciferase from Photinus pyralis (FLuc). Large-scale chemical profile studies have identified a variety of scaffolds that inhi...

The selection of a genetic reporter can be difficult because of the wide range of genes available. In order to reduce the selection, we compared the performance of different reporter genes: firefly luciferase (Photinus pyralis lucFF), bacterial luciferase operon (Photorhabdus luminescens luxCDABE), green fluorescent protein (Aequorea victoria gfp), and red fluorescent protein (Discosoma sp. dsr...

We have used random chemical mutagenesis and a simple genetic screen to generate and isolate a thermostable mutant of luciferase from the North American firefly (Photinus pyralis). A single G-to-A transition mutation, resulting in the substitution of a glutamate for a lysine residue at position 354 in the protein sequence, was shown to be responsible for this enhanced thermostability. Replaceme...