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To this end, DeLeo said she and some of her co-authors are working on creating a genetic test to determine if an octocoral species has functional copies of the genes underlying luciferase, an enzyme involved in bioluminescence.

Like all bioluminescent organisms, marine ostracods and terrestrial fireflies both rely on a specialized enzyme called luciferase to produce their signature glow.

In order to investigate how mammalian cells' immune responses interact with and are modulated by interactions with phages, researchers applied the well-studied phage T4 to mammalian cells in vitro and analyzed the cellular responses using luciferase reporter and antibody microarray assays.

There has been limited research on bioluminescence and luciferase, which is sometimes extracted for medical science.

Oakley and Hensley, in collaboration with Elizabeth Torres, an evolutionary biologist at California State University, Los Angeles, have sequenced the ostracod genes for luciferase, the enzyme that adds oxygen to a molecule called luciferin to make light in all bioluminescent organisms.