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Bioluminescence emissions of the firefly Luciola praeusta Kiesenwetter 1874 (Coleoptera: Lampyridae: Luciolinae)

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An Erratum to this article was published on 01 September 2009

Abstract

We recorded the in vivo emission and time-resolved spectra of the firefly Luciola praeusta Kiesenwetter 1874 (Coleoptera: Lampyridae: Luciolinae). The emission spectrum shows that the full width at half maximum (FWHM) value for this particular species is 55 nm, which is significantly narrower than the in vivo half-widths reported till now. The time-resolved spectrum reveals that a flash of about 100 ms duration is, in fact, composed of a number of microsecond pulses. This suggests that the speed of the enzyme-catalysed chemiluminescence reaction in the firefly for the emission of light is much faster than was previously believed.

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Abbreviations

FWHM:

full width at half maximum

HWHM:

half width at half maximum

NO:

nitric oxide

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Gauhati University, Guwahati, 781 014, India

    A. Gohain Barua, S. Hazarika & N. M. Saikia

  2. Department of Physics, Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh, 786 004, India

    G. D. Baruah

Authors
  1. A. Gohain Barua
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  2. S. Hazarika
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  3. N. M. Saikia
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  4. G. D. Baruah
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to A. Gohain Barua.

Additional information

A version of this article has already appeared in an archive Nature Precedings; see http://precedings.nature.com/documents/1351/version/2/html

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Barua, A.G., Hazarika, S., Saikia, N.M. et al. Bioluminescence emissions of the firefly Luciola praeusta Kiesenwetter 1874 (Coleoptera: Lampyridae: Luciolinae). J Biosci 34, 287–292 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12038-009-0032-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12038-009-0032-4

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