On July 3rd and 4th, 2021, we celebrate World Firefly Day. This year, 2021, marks 30 years of luciferase products firefly luciferase vectors and Luciferase Assay System. These tools are key in advancing bioluminescent technology. To celebrate this day, we want to highlight some innovations that have been made possible with these tools.
Continue reading “World Firefly Day: Shining More Light on Glo-ing Innovations”firefly luciferase
The Work of Emmett Chappelle: Lighting Up the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
What do the workings of red blood cells, ensuring breathable air for astronauts, and scraping soil off NASA’s Viking spacecraft have in common? The sharp thinking of biochemist Emmett Chappelle.
February is Black History Month in the US—a time to reflect on the contributions of African Americans in all fields and celebrate their accomplishments while recognizing the adversity they had to overcome in American society.
2021 also marks 30 years since the first firefly luciferase reporter vectors and detection reagents became available as products. There’s no better person to highlight this month than Emmett Chappelle, whose work with the luciferase reaction is still used for many applications today.
Continue reading “The Work of Emmett Chappelle: Lighting Up the Search for Extraterrestrial Life”Celebrating 30 Years of “Glo-ing” Research
This post is written by guest blogger, Amy Landreman, PhD, Sr. Product Manger at Promega Corporation.
In December of 1990, Promega first discussed the use of firefly luciferase (luc) as an emerging reporter technology in the article, Firefly Luciferase: A New Tool for Molecular Biologists. At the time, the gene coding chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (cat) was most commonly used by researchers, but it was thought that the bioluminescent properties of firefly luciferase, extreme sensitivity and rapid simple detection, could make a significant difference in how molecular biologists tackled their research. Several months later, the first firefly luciferase reporter vectors and detection reagents became available as products, making this new technology more broadly accessible to the research community. Today firefly luciferase is no longer a “new tool”, with it and many other bioluminescent reporter technologies being standard elements of the modern research toolbox.
Why You Don’t Need to Select a Wavelength for a Luciferase Assay
It’s a question I’m asked probably once a week. “What wavelength do I select on my luminometer when performing a luciferase assay?” The question is a good and not altogether unexpected one, especially for those new to bioluminescent assays. The answer is that in most cases, you don’t and in fact shouldn’t select a wavelength (the exception to this rule is if you’re measuring light emitted in two simultaneous luciferase reactions). To understand why requires a bit of an explanation of absorbance, fluorescence, and luminescence assays, and the differences among them.
Absorbance, fluorescence, and luminescence assays are all means to quantify something of interest, be that a genetic reporter, cell viability, cytotoxicity, apoptosis, or other markers. In principle, they are all similar. For example, a genetic reporter assay is an indicator of gene expression. The promoter of a gene of interest can be cloned upstream of a reporter such as β-galactosidase, GFP, or firefly luciferase. The amount of each of these reporters that is transcribed into mRNA and translated into protein by the cell is indicative of the endogenous expression of the gene of interest.
Continue reading “Why You Don’t Need to Select a Wavelength for a Luciferase Assay”Dual-Luciferase or Dual-Glo Luciferase Assay System? Which one should I choose for my reporter assays?
I’ve got a set of experiments planned that, if all goes well, will provide me with the answer I have been seeking for months. Plus, my supervisor is eagerly awaiting the results because she needs the data for a grant application, so I don’t want to mess it up. However, I am faced with a choice for my firefly and Renilla luciferase reporter assays: Do I use the Dual-Luciferase® Reporter Assay System or Dual-Glo® Luciferase Assay System? What’s the difference? How do I decide which to use? I’m so confused! Help!
Sound familiar? Not to worry! The choice is not difficult once you know how these assays work and how they differ.
To inject or not inject?
Luciferase assays are useful tools for studying a wide range of biological questions. They can be performed easily by adding a reagent that provides components necessary to generate a luminescent signal directly to cells or a cell lysate. However, once this reagent has been added, how long you wait to measure the signal becomes a key consideration in generating consistent data. Dependent on which luciferase assay you use, you may need a luminometer that can use injectors to deliver the assay reagents. The reason for this is simple, but can be confusing to new users.
Let’s start by discussing two types of luciferase assays: “flash” vs. “glow”. Continue reading “To inject or not inject?”
