IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v440y2006i7082d10.1038_440285a.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A pocketful of colour

Author

Listed:
  • Joshua Finkelstein

Abstract

Flying Colours Fireflies communicate using coloured light that is emitted when an electronically excited oxyluciferin species — made by the enzyme luciferase — relaxes to its groundstate. Point mutants of the enzyme can dramatically alter the colour of this ‘bioluminescence’, and though the luciferase X-ray crystal structure has been solved previously, the exact nature of this colour change had eluded biologists. Nakatsu et al. have now solved the X-ray structures of luciferase in several different states, and identify a specific conformational change in an isoleucine residue as the trigger for changes in bioluminescence colour.

Suggested Citation

  • Joshua Finkelstein, 2006. "A pocketful of colour," Nature, Nature, vol. 440(7082), pages 285-285, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:440:y:2006:i:7082:d:10.1038_440285a
    DOI: 10.1038/440285a
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/440285a
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/440285a?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:440:y:2006:i:7082:d:10.1038_440285a. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.