Biofluorescence, sometimes confused with bioluminescence, is released when an animal such as a jellyfish or eel absorbs light and re-emits it in a different color. They create light through the interaction of the enzymes luciferase and luciferin (the terms are derived from the Latin word lucifer-light-bringer), or by hosting light-emitting bacteria. The sparkle of marine bioluminescence occurs in species from fish in the deep ocean to jellyfish and dinoflagellates in the shallows, among others. Only recently, however, have researchers discovered exactly how bioluminescence is created, let alone how to employ it in cures for disease. Some two thousand years have passed since the time of Pliny and Dioscorides. A jellyfish now known as Pelagia noctiluca, Latin for “night light of the sea,” the species emits a glowing substance from the outer edge of its bell. When boiled in water or taken in wine, Pliny believed, pulmo marinus treated “the gravell and the stone.”Īlso in the first century, Greek physician and botanist Pedanius Dioscorides posited in De Materia Medica, an herbal medicine encyclopedia he penned, that “ pulmo marinus being beaten small whilst it is new and so applied, doth help such as are troubled with chillblanes and such as ye have goute.” In Historia Naturalis, Roman physician and naturalist Pliny the Elder described medicinal substances derived from aquatic animals, including pulmo marinus. One of the first accounts of bioluminescence and health was written in 77 CE. Today, the glimmering power of bioluminescence has been harnessed for lifesaving uses in medicine, from lighting up structures inside the brain to illuminating the progression of cancer cells. Throughout history, humans have been fascinated with the “living light” produced by luminescent organisms.
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