Terrestrial and marine bioluminescent organisms from the Indian subcontinent: a review
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Terrestrial and marine bioluminescent organisms from the Indian subcontinent: a review Ramesh Chatragadda
Received: 14 July 2020 / Accepted: 15 October 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract The inception of bioluminescence by Harvey (1952) has led to a Nobel Prize to Osamu Shimomura (Chemistry, 2008) in biological research. Consequently, in recent years, bioluminescence-based assays to monitor toxic pollutants as a real-time marker, to study various diseases and their propagation in plants and animals, are developed in many countries. The emission ability of bioluminescence is improved by gene modification, and also, search for novel bioluminescent systems is underway. Over 100 species of organisms belonging to different taxa are known to be luminous in India. However, the diversity and distribution of luminous organisms and their applications are studied scarcely in the Indian scenario. In this context, the present review provides an overview of the current understanding of various bioluminescent organisms, functions, and applications. A detailed checklist of known bioluminescent organisms from India’s marine, terrestrial, and freshwater ecosystems is detailed. This review infers that Indian scientists are needed to extend their research on various aspects of luminescent organisms such as biodiversity, genomics, and chemical mechanisms for conservation, ecological, and biomedical applications.
R. Chatragadda (*) Biological Oceanography Division (BOD), CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography (CSIR-NIO), Dona Paula, Goa 403004, India e-mail: [email protected]
Keywords Luciferins . Luciferase . Photophores . Fluorescent proteins . Luminescence applications
Introduction Bioluminescence is an innate natural light-emitting phenomena displayed by some species of bacteria, fungi, dinoflagellates, sponge, jellyfish, deep-sea corals, annelids, shrimp, squids, gastropods, brittle stars, tunicates, and fishes. In this phenomenon, the molecular oxygen reacts with luciferin in the presence of luciferase enzyme and forms oxyluciferin molecule responsible for cold light emission. This natural enigma is widely distributed in aerial, terrestrial, marine, and freshwater ecosystems. Globally, around 686 (Björn and Ghiradella 2008), or 700 (Shimomura 2006), or 746 (Oba and Schultz 2014) luminous genera are known to be luminescent from terrestrial and marine environments. Currently, around 71 (Desjardin et al. 2010; Stevani et al. 2013) or 83 species of fungi (Vydryakova et al. 2011), 50 species of bacteria (Ramesh and Mohanraju 2019), 18 genera of dinoflagellates (Baker et al. 2008), 70 genera of squids (Herring 1977), 66 species of brittle stars (Jones and Mallefet 2012), and 11 orders of bony fishes under 42 fish families (Paitio et al. 2016; Suntsov et al. 2008) are known to be luminescent. Except plants, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, all other taxonomic lineages are luminescent (Haddock et al. 2010). Considerably, 80% of the deep-sea organisms are known to be luminous (Widder 2010), and 90% of plankto
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