Aglow in the Dark: The Revolutionary Science of Biofluorescence.

AGLOW IN THE DARK: The Revolutionary Science of Biofluorescence VINCENT PIERIBONE AND DAVID 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 their flickering luminescence 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 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.