Aglow in the Dark: The Revolutionary Science of Biofluorescence.AGLOW IN THE DARK: The Revolutionary Science of Biofluorescence VINCENT VINCENT Vital Information Necessary Centralized (movie, The Black Hole) PIERIBONE AND DAVID David, in the Bible David, d. c.970 B.C., king of ancient Israel (c.1010–970 B.C.), successor of Saul. The Book of First Samuel introduces him as the youngest of eight sons who is anointed king by Samuel to replace Saul, who had been deemed a failure. F. GRUBER The last German submarine sunk in World War I was betrayed when it triggered the glow of microbes in the Mediterranean Sea. This phenomenon, which gives certain jellyfish jellyfish, common name for the free-swimming stage (see polyp and medusa), of certain invertebrate animals of the phylum Cnidaria (the coelenterates). The body of a jellyfish is shaped like a bell or umbrella, with a clear, jellylike material filling most of the their flickering luminescence luminescence, general term applied to all forms of cool light, i.e., light emitted by sources other than a hot, incandescent body, such as a black body radiator. and is characteristic of more than 90 percent of deep-sea creatures, is called biofluorescence. Pieribone and Gruber reveal the painstaking efforts of scientists to identify the mechanisms behind this mysterious light, including 19th-century work by Raphael Dubois, who coined the terms luciferase luciferase (loosif´ n an enzyme present in certain luminous organisms that act to bring about the oxidation of luciferins; energy produced in the and luciferine to describe the catalyst and fuel for the biofluorescent reaction. In the 1930s, Edmund Newton Harvey identified these compounds in numerous glowing organisms, including the firefly, and 30 years later, Osamu Shimomura discovered the novel way by which jellyfish produce light. Cellular-molecular biologist Pieribone and journalist Gruber detail how the groundbreaking discoveries of these and other researchers have had widespread implications in forensic science, molecular biology, and neuroscience. Harvard, 2006, 288 p., color photos, hardcover, $24.95. |
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