UC TURNS PROFIT ON GLOW GENE : INVENTIONS BRING IN $63.2 MILLION IN YEAR.

Byline: Peter Sinton San Francisco Chronicle 

The University of California, which makes more money off its inventions than any other U.S. educational institution, has a new royalty generator - the stuff that makes fireflies glow.

Cloned by UC San Diego biochemists and molecular biologists, luciferase may not have the commercial punch of some other university discoveries such as vaccines or genetic engineering techniques. But the enzyme has a surprisingly bright future beyond its God-given original purpose - giving a charge to beetles' sex lives.

Recombinant luciferase - for which the university last month won a patent - can be used to screen water, food and cosmetics for contamination; for drug discovery and diagnostic tests; and in molecular biology research.

``Luciferase revenues could be in the six figures,'' said David Aston, associate director of UC's Office of Technology Transfer.

The UC system, including nine campuses and three national laboratories, has spawned more than 400 inventions. For the year ending last June 30, these brought in royalty and fee income of $63.2 million. That is more than invention revenues at any other university and excludes another $7.1 million in expense reimbursements from licensees.

Luciferase - also called living light - is stored in a variety of organisms, including some jellyfish, marine plankton, bacteria and mushrooms as well as insects. In addition to fireflies, glowworms (larvae of Phengodes beetles) and a class of click beetles also sport internal lightbulbs.

UC's patent, which had been pending for 11 years, deals specifically with using genetic engineering techniques to create beetle luciferase.

``We cloned the gene that makes fireflies glow,'' said Keith Wood of his Ph.D. work with the laboratories of professors Marlene DeLuca and Donald Helinski at UC San Diego. Wood is now group manager of bioluminescence at Promega Corp. in Madison, Wis. The privately owned company is a leader in harnessing the glow-in-the-dark radiant reactions produced by living cells.

Fireflies - also known as lightning bugs - might be shocked to find there are multiple uses for their chemical conversion kits. (Male and female fireflies only live for a week or two and only care about using their built-in flash attachments to quickly meet and mate.)

Luciferase creates light in combination with oxygen, a molecule called luciferin and adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a substance found in all living cells.

The ingredients may not sound like a recipe for commercial success. But researchers have found that they can use luciferin and luciferase together to look for ATP as an indication of life.

A luciferase probe was aboard an American lander that checked for life on Mars (none was found). Major food manufacturers and European cosmetics companies are having better luck using luciferase to spot ``bio-contamination.'' If there's a glow, it indicates the presence of bacteria.

Pharmaceutical companies are using luciferase as a marker to identify potentially useful chemical compounds. Similarly, it is being used clinically to test the efficacy of drugs on certain cancer cells and other diseases.