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Bioluminescence What Makes Anglerfish Lures Glow
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Bioluminescence • What do glowing plants, fighting cancer and an anglerfish's lure have in common? • Twitter - / augnitia • Deep down in the North Atlantic, there's a tiny speck of light amongst an endless, swallowing darkness. What is this singular light almost 1000 metres below the surface? Tethered to it is a solitary anglerfish, bobbing along, waiting for a curious prey to mistakingly investigate the lonely beacon. But what makes the Anglerfish’s lure glow exactly? It’s a little something called bioluminescence. • Light starts to emit when a pigment called luciferin is produced and then oxidized by the enzyme luciferase. All told, hundreds of bugs, fungi, molluscs, fish and bacteria exhibit various kinds of this behaviour. • Generally, bioluminescence is used in 3 different ways: defence, offence and communication. • For defence, it can be used to startle predators! As counter-illumination to evade predators. Misdirection as a smokescreen, where a predator lunges towards the light as the prey sneaks away. Also, when necessary, a glowing fragment can be split off, helping the more vital parts escape intact. Or, as a burglar alarm, where light is used to expose a predator to a predator of its own. Also as a sacrificial tag, tagging the predator with the light leading even larger predators right to it. And lastly, the light can be used as warning colouration which deters settlers keeping the area free from predators. • For offence, bioluminescence is used to lure curious prey. Attract a potential host to live with, live for or live off of. It can also illuminate a habitat, causing curious critters to investigate which unknowingly exposes them. It can also be used to stun and confuse a prey. Or, for spotlighting a prey preventing them from hiding or getting away. • And the last category, communication, light is sometimes used as identification for mate recognition or attraction. And also for quorum sensing. For example, in a squid's photophore, when around a hundred billion (10^11) plankton are packed together inside a single millilitre, the plankton drop what they're doing and start to all work together to make light. • Bioluminescence isn’t only being used in nature. Scientists have harnessed it to fill many roles in biology and medicine. Luciferase systems are widely used in genetic engineering as reporter genes and in biomedical research for imaging. In optogenetics, bioluminescence is used to control cells in living tissues like neurons. In the fight against cancer, it's starting to be used to target only the cells that have turned cancerous and then eliminate them without effecting the surrounding, healthy, cells. • Bioluminescence is also being investigated by scientists and industrial designers for purposes never before thought possible; things like street lighting or as decoration. In June 2013, the Glowing Plant project raised almost half a million dollars on Kickstarter. They are currently developing their second round of seeds and are planned for release later this year. Who knows? Maybe in the near future we won’t be getting light from wires, plugs and electricity but from growing, breathing, bioluminous plants.
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