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Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation for use of their amino acid analyzer. Special thanks go to Mrs. Vivian Davis for performing the amino acid analyses. References Anson, M. L., and Mirsky, A. E. (1932), J . Gen. Physioi. 16, 59. Chiang, L., Sanchez-Chiang, L., Wolf, S., and Tang, J. (1966), Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol. Med. 122,700. Erlanger, B. F., Vratsanos, S. M., Wassermann, N., and Cooper, A . G. (1965), J . B i d . Chem. 240, PC3447. Erlanger, B. F., Vratsanos, S. M., Wassermann, N., and Cooper, A. G. (1966), Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 23,243. Erlanger, B. F., Vratsanos, S. M., Wassermann, N., and
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Bacterial Bioluminescence. Comparisons of Bioluminescence Emission Spectra, the Fluorescence of Luciferase Reaction Mixtures, and the Fluorescence of Flavin Cations" Michael Eley,t John Lee, J.-M. Lhoste, C. Y . Lee, Milton J. Cormier,$ and P. Hemmerich
ABSTRACT : The fluorescence emission spectra of flavin cations in several rigid solvents were measured. Solvent polarity conditions were found in which these fluorescence spectra closely match the emission spectra of bacterial bioluminescence for the in aim systems, the in zitro reaction initiated with various re-
I
t has long been known that the requirements for cell-free bacterial bioluminescence are bacterial luciferase (Strehler, 1953)) reduced F M N l and oxygen (Strehler et ai., 1954), and a long-chain fatty aldehyde (Cormier and Strehler, 1953). Studies on pure crystalline luciferase isolated from Phorobacterium Jischeri (Kuwabara et al., 1965; Cormier and Kuwabara, 1.965; Hastings et a/., 1969) have not established ~-
* From
the Department of Biochemistry, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30601 ; New England Institute, Ridgefield, Connecticut 06877; M u i u m National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris 5 , France; Universitat Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany. Receiced March 23, 1970. This work was supported in part by grants from the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission [AT(40-1)-2741, AT (30-1)3401, and AT(40-1)-3974] and the National Science Foundation (GB-7400x1). M. J. C. is a NIH Career Development Awardee (201
