RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Beetle luciferases with naturally red- and blue-shifted emission
JF Life Science Alliance
JO Life Sci. Alliance
FD Life Science Alliance LLC
SP e201800072
DO 10.26508/lsa.201800072
VO 1
IS 4
A1 César Carrasco-López
A1 Juliana C Ferreira
A1 Nathan M Lui
A1 Stefan Schramm
A1 Romain Berraud-Pache
A1 Isabelle Navizet
A1 Santosh Panjikar
A1 Panče Naumov
A1 Wael M Rabeh
YR 2018
UL https://www.life-science-alliance.org/content/1/4/e201800072.abstract
AB The different colors of light emitted by bioluminescent beetles that use an identical substrate and chemiexcitation reaction sequence to generate light remain a challenging and controversial mechanistic conundrum. The crystal structures of two beetle luciferases with red- and blue-shifted light relative to the green yellow light of the common firefly species provide direct insight into the molecular origin of the bioluminescence color. The structure of a blue-shifted green-emitting luciferase from the firefly Amydetes vivianii is monomeric with a structural fold similar to the previously reported firefly luciferases. The only known naturally red-emitting luciferase from the glow-worm Phrixothrix hirtus exists as tetramers and octamers. Structural and computational analyses reveal varying aperture between the two domains enclosing the active site. Mutagenesis analysis identified two conserved loops that contribute to the color of the emitted light. These results are expected to advance comparative computational studies into the conformational landscape of the luciferase reaction sequence.