Bioluminescence -- the peculiar ability of some organisms to behave like living night-lights -- has been “invented” dozens of times in evolutionary history and serves a variety of purposes, from attracting mates and luring prey to warding off predators. Its existence in fungi – a rare if not unique case of bioluminescence outside the animal and microbial worlds – has posed more of a mystery. But scientists may now be able to explain not only why certain mushrooms glow in the dark, but how – and in doing so they could be nearer to creating glowing trees as a novel form of street lighting.
A team from the Institute of Bio-organic Chemistry in Moscow has teased apart the chemical structure of the fungal protein used to generate the ghostly glow of foxfire. They did it by the counterintuitive approach of looking for it in mushrooms that did not glow in the dark because it was here they thought the precursors of the bioluminescence substance, known as luciferin, might be more easily found – and they were right.
According to their findings, the mechanism of fungal bioluminescence suggests the formation of luciferin from a certain precursor. It was established that the luciferin precursor is also present in non-luminous forest fungi, and more importantly it is about 100 times more abundant than in the biomass of luminous species. Therefore, it made sense to extract the precursor from non-luminous fungi.
Russian scientists found that the bioluminescent fungi use a type of luciferin quite different from the eight other classes of molecule already chemically described in the animal and microbial worlds. He and his team effectively discovered the ninth luciferin, and the first to be found in the fungal-plant sphere of life.
https://www.theguardian.com/science...-mushrooms-conservation-enviroment-bioscience
A team from the Institute of Bio-organic Chemistry in Moscow has teased apart the chemical structure of the fungal protein used to generate the ghostly glow of foxfire. They did it by the counterintuitive approach of looking for it in mushrooms that did not glow in the dark because it was here they thought the precursors of the bioluminescence substance, known as luciferin, might be more easily found – and they were right.
According to their findings, the mechanism of fungal bioluminescence suggests the formation of luciferin from a certain precursor. It was established that the luciferin precursor is also present in non-luminous forest fungi, and more importantly it is about 100 times more abundant than in the biomass of luminous species. Therefore, it made sense to extract the precursor from non-luminous fungi.
Russian scientists found that the bioluminescent fungi use a type of luciferin quite different from the eight other classes of molecule already chemically described in the animal and microbial worlds. He and his team effectively discovered the ninth luciferin, and the first to be found in the fungal-plant sphere of life.
https://www.theguardian.com/science...-mushrooms-conservation-enviroment-bioscience