Fig. 9.

Bacterial bioluminescence in a nut shell. The central player in bacterial bioluminescence is the heterodimeric luciferase (red/orange; see Fig. 3), which carries out the oxidation of long-chain fatty aldehydes to the corresponding acid accompanied by light emission (see Scheme 1). The required reduced FMN is provided by a NAD(P)H-dependent FMN reductase (LuxG, on the left side the structure of the closely related enzyme Fre of E. coli is shown in olive; PDB 1QFJ [18]) and the fatty aldehyde is synthesized through the multifunctional complex consisting of LuxCDE (green, violet and blue model on the right; see Fig. 8).