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Team:Cambridge/Bioluminescence/Photinus pyralis
From 2010.igem.org
Project Firefly: Photinus pyralis
The luciferase of the North American firefly, P. pyralis, is a tried and tested mechanism for creating bioluminescence. We were aware that a luciferase from this organism was already present in the registry (BBa_I712019). We wanted to improve on this by three techniques:
- Codon optimisation for expression in E. coli to increase the rate of translation
- Using a mutant with increased substrate affinity
- Parallel use of the Photinus pyralis luciferin regenerating enzyme to both relieve inhibition by oxyluciferin and increase availability of luciferin.
