Episode 7: Glow in the Dark: the Magic of Ocean Bioluminescence
Episode Description: Glowing sharks & blue beaches spark curiosity— journey with marine ecophysiologist Dr. Laurent Duchâtelet into the luminous world of ocean bioluminescence. Discover how lantern sharks, dragonfish, plankton and more deploy living light for hunting, hiding and flirting; why wavelengths shift from blue to green to rare red; and how decoding luciferin–luciferase chemistry is powering pollution sensors and cancer diagnostics. Guided by deep-sea ROV footage and decades of lab work, this conversation illuminates 90 independent evolutions of glow, the sport-utility of bio-light, and the urgent need to fund fundamental ocean science before these wonders wink out. If you’ve ever dreamed of swimming through spark-lit surf or marveled at fireflies, this episode reveals the science behind the magic—and what we still don’t know.
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Episode Guest: Dr. Laurent DuChatelet
Learn more about Dr. Laurent DuChatelet at UCLouvain
Read Dr. DuChatelet’s article on Marine Bioluminescence.
Find more of Dr. DuChatelet’s publications on Research Gate.
Blue Glowing Beaches Around the World
Episode Transcript and more information on the Pine Forest Media website
Follow Pine Forest Media on Instagram @pineforestmedia
Hosted, produced, and edited by Clark Marchese
Cover art by Jomiro Eming
Theme music by Nela Ruiz
Listen to Plastic Podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Listen to South Pole on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Listen to Something in the Water on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Transcript:
Clark (00:12.002)
Hello there, and welcome back to another episode of Oceanography, the podcast that dives deep into the science of our oceans, the latest in marine research, and the scientists working hard to better understand and protect our blue planet. And I just want to say today, you're glowing.
Clark (00:46.324)
All right, oceanography is getting a major glow up today. All of us at the PFM team and all of you listening are really thriving. We are luminous. We are illuminating. We are bio-luminating. Biluminescence is one of the most fantastical and magical phenomenon in the ocean. So of course we need to talk about it and learn what is going on there. Now, what is biluminescence? Well, it is a biochemical emission of light from a living organism. We're going to understand the mechanics of in just a minute, but you've probably seen it before, maybe even in real life. Fireflies are a great example of bioluminescence if you have ever frolicked in a summer field on an August night in New Hampshire. Other famous examples are the blue glowing beaches that are all over Instagram, and these beaches do exist in the real world as well. I'm going to put a link in the episode description to an article with eight different blue glowing beaches from Hong Kong to California to Jamaica, so you can find one nearest you. Bioluminescence also gets featured often on nature documentaries and Planet Earth, both above land and below the sea. And we also see this in Finding Nemo, which we will discuss shortly. But what is the cause of all of this magic and what is it for? Today, we are going to be welcoming Dr. Laurent Duchâtelet to the show, and he is going to make sense of all of it for us.
Dr. Duchatelet is a postdoctoral researcher at UC Leuven. He is an expert on bioluminescence and he published an article last year titled Marine Eukaryote Bioluminescence, our review of species and their functional biology. And this article is sort of a synthesis of our state of knowledge of bioluminescence in the marine environment. In our interview, which will begin in just a moment, we will talk about the purpose and the function of bioluminescence in the ocean, the different colors we can see and what they mean. bioluminescent sharks, which I didn't even know existed, and how researching these underwater mysteries can inform other scientific research and even biomedical breakthroughs. But before we hear from him, I would love to hear from you listeners. Feel free to drop a comment wherever you're listening or to write a review to let us know what you think about oceanography so far, or if you have any ideas for future episodes, we would love to follow up on those. And
Clark (03:05.922)
Beyond what fun it is to interact with all of you, these things really help us get the show out to more ears and it helps Pine Forest Media grow. Which, if this is your first time joining us, this show is produced by Pine Forest Media, the only independent podcast network in the world dedicated entirely to environmental science and storytelling. If you would like to support this work, you can do so on Patreon, there is a link in the episode description, and the funds we collect there are will help this show and others like it keep going, and a portion of the proceeds we collect will go to other science research and communications projects that our contributors will get to help us choose. All right, and with that, we can get started. So settle in, dim the lights, and here we go.
Clark (03:55.126)
Alright, Dr. Duchâtelet, thank you so much for being here today. Why don't we start by having you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into researching bioluminescence.
Dr. DuChatelet
Yes, of course. So, hello everyone. So I'm actually a marine ecophysiologist, specializing in research for bioligicens organisms. so basically I perform my study at the University Catholic of Louvain in Belgium after few years at the university I continued with a PhD in Belgium followed by different postdoctoral research both in Belgium and in Sweden but all based on the study and the understanding of biolessent organisms. So as you understand my research focused mainly on the understanding of how these organisms will produce a light And as all the students at university, we need to finish by a master thesis. And I had the chance, I was proposed at that time to work on biolessian sharks. So I was also astonished at the beginning, kind of what this weird topic, biolessian sharks doesn't exist. Yeah, they exist. And I started my PhD trying to understand how they control their live productions, how they succeed to really accurately produce light. So that was the beginning of the story and I continued because I was kind of with stars in my eyes when I saw my sharks glowing for the first time. And that was the story, the first step of my love for bioluminescence and for the marine life.
Clark (05:27.384)
Okay, I can definitely see how glowing sharks might put stars in someone's eyes. I also did not know they existed. And I do want to know how they control their bioluminescence. But before we get there, let's make sure everyone is on the same page. Can you tell us what exactly it is or define bioluminescence for us?
Dr. DuChatelet
Yes, of course. So for that, we need to go back to 1956 with Harvey, a scientist, an American scientist that defined bioluminescence as the projection of visible light by living organisms thanks to a biochemical reaction. So I put the accent on visible light. You have to imagine that basically all organisms emit light in a way. We are all emitting, as humans for example, emitted infrareds, but we are not bioluminescent. So it needs to be visible. That's one thing. The other thing is that it needs to be a living organism. So you have some kind of, if you go to the market sometimes, or if you put a dead fish in the fridge for a long period of time, you will see that some bacteria will grow on it and produce light. That's not the fish that emit light, that's the bacteria. One thing that is important also on the definition of Biolusens is the fact that it's a spontaneous emission of light. So it's a de novo creation of light, meaning that, for example, you need to make the difference between Biolusens, Phosphorescence and Fluorescence. So Phosphorescence and Fluorescence need to have a kind of input of energy to re-emit the energy in another way. So basically you have that kind of wonderful small stars that you can stick on the walls of the child. rooms you need to put some light on them so give energy to this device that allow this device to emit light. That's a basically ray mission of light. Here by your license is a de novo production of light.
Clark (07:15.406)
Okay, so that is an important distinction. We have bioluminescence as the spontaneous creation of visible light in a living organism, and that is separate from fluorescent light and phosphorescent light. And yes, I did have those stars on the ceiling of my childhood bedroom, and maybe they need to make a comeback. One thing I want to get an idea of is how common bioluminescence is in the ocean environment.
Dr. DuChatelet
So bioluminescence is not so common in fact. Compared to the huge diversity of organisms and the total amount of organisms we have in our oceans, it's really a really small proportion of organisms that emit light. But if we look at the total amount of species that are able to produce light, basically taking into account all the terrestrial organisms, the organisms that living in fresh water, and the marine organisms. Clearly the marine organisms display the most important number of species that are able to produce life.
Clark
Okay, I didn't know that. And then, I guess if we're thinking about the prevalence of certain traits in a given environment, that leads us pretty directly into evolution. I read somewhere in your research that bioluminescence evolved separately 90 different times. Can you help us make sense of what that sentence means, and how could some traits evolve separately?
Dr. DuChatelet
Okay, so that's a tricky question and it's really astonishing for scientists. So basically that sentence that you mentioned, so the 19-time appearance of biolinsins, means that these phenomena, these skills, I want to say, for these organisms appear independently more than 19 times during the evolution. Meaning that if you look at a tree of life, you don't have a kind of ancestor that produced light.
Dr. DuChatelet (09:00.238)
So that's kind of general idea that basically they have no ancestor that are luminous, common ancestor that is luminous.
Clark
Okay, that's helpful. So there are a lot more than 90 species that are bioluminescent, but if a species has an ancestor that is bioluminescent, it wouldn't get counted on that list as a separate evolutionary occurrence. For context, I also read a book, The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Colbert. It's not the most uplifting read, but it has a lot of interesting information about biodiversity. Anyways, I read that tusks like you would find on an elephant or a walrus or a mammoth These tusks evolved separately in history only five times. So I guess 90 is quite a large number to be independent instances of evolution in completely separate contexts. And correct me if this statement is inaccurate in any way, but my understanding is that for a trait to evolve and become as prevalent as bioluminescence, it will have had to have been beneficial to an organism in some way. So I guess I'm trying to get at how does it benefit organisms?
Dr. DuChatelet
Exactly.
Clark (10:06.188)
What is the evolutionary advantage of bioluminescence?
Dr. DuChatelet
That's the tricky part of the study of bioluminescence, is to understand and demonstrate the function of these luminescence. The ecological meaning, as you say, is complicated in ocean studies, since mainly the organisms that produce light are located under 200 meters, so basically in the mesopelagic zones, and so it's complicated to collect them, to have them, and to maintain them to really study the bioluminescence functions of these these organisms. But the thing is that we have some guessings, have some suggested functions and they can be clusters in three main parts. So the first part will be the orphans, so basically the predation. that's, I mean, in the idea of general people, you have this image of the anglerfish in the movie Finding Nemo. So when Dory and Marlin are attracted by the lights, towards the jaws of this big anglerfish. So that's a way to use Biolucence. So basically using Biolucence as a lure. You can also, as a predator, have a kind of flashlight in front of you. So you can light your environment and see your prey. That's another predatory functions that could be clustered in that group. And they have also other ideas, such as the use of counter-alumination.
But I will use that example for the defense functions. That the second cluster.
Clark (11:34.03)
Okay, option one for predation, luring or locating prey.
Dr. DuChatelet
So you can also use biomechanics to avoid predation. So the idea for example, and they have multiple assumptions, but you can prevent your predator by aligning yourself that you are not palatable. So you have a bad taste, or you can be dangerous for the predator. if you have some spine on the back for example. So you can enlibe, it's called the mechanism of aposematism. That's the same mechanism as the beautiful color and bright color of a wasp. So it's to prevent the predator. I'm toxic or I'm venomous or I am dangerous.
Clark
Option 2 to ward off potential predators.
Dr. DuChatelet
Another way is the counterlimination. So the idea of counterlimination for mesopelagic organisms, so living at 200 meters, it's remain a fan blue light. If ventrally you emit a blue light that mimic the light in the surrounding environment, you will disappear from the eyes of an underneath swimming predator. So basically it's a camouflage like a chameleon.
Clark (12:39.626)
my God. Wow. It's like an invisibility cloak.
Dr. DuChatelet
The thing is that you can also imagine that these mechanisms could also be used for predation. You can also disappear from the eyes of a prey. So that's the idea in terrestrial organisms. We have the line, the strips for the zebra that allow him to hide in the savanna, but you have also the strip from the tiger that allow him to hide in the jungle. That's exactly the same. You have also funny functions, more tricky to understand. The polar alarm hypothesis. So that's a tricky idea was demonstrated, for example, for small copepods. So some plankton species that can emit light. They emit light when they are attacked by a first predator. They emit light and when they emit light, they prevent that they are attacked by a first predator to a secondary predator. That will attack the first predator. So calling the police. So that's a kind of way to have this avoidance of predations. wow.
Clark
So the burglar alarm alerts other members of the community that there is a predator nearby. The simply safe of the sea.
The third big group of functions that we can demonstrate for the BioLensense is the communications tool. So basically you can use BioLensense to communicate. That could be simple communications, for example for schooling. Some fishes use the BioLensense for saying to the group, we are changing direction, for example. But you can also use BioLensense and communication skills to just final mate for a prediction.
Dr. DuChatelet (14:18.466)
that's well known in the terrestrial environment for the fireflies for example. But in the sea we have also some planktonic species that emit strain of light to say to the female, I'm here. So that's different functions, but it's really difficult and complicated in terms of science to demonstrate those functions in the deep sea organisms.
Clark
Okay, wow, I just learned so much and I think you're right that a lot of people will have the anglerfish reference from Finding Nemo, but there's so many more functions. So let's do a quick recap. Number one, predation. Number two, defense and number three, communication. But I see how it could get tricky to study or group these things when the same strategy like camouflage, for example, could be used both to hunt and also to avoid being hunted. But all of these functions are responses to specific scenarios. Which leads me to ask if species are able to control when they emit light and if so...
Dr. DuChatelet
So clearly, to fulfill these different functions, these organisms, to transmit the message, need to accurately control the signal, so to control the biomecics. So they have so many different organisms that it's complicated to make kind of generalizations, but for single cell organisms. I want to say so for some clementinic species, the control is not really a control. So they emit light with mechanical contacts quite rapidly. That's the case of this beautiful wave in, for example, Costa Rica, when you have this blue wave that appear in summer. So basically it's triggered by the mechanical simulations of the wave. But for other organisms that display kind of a cluster of
Dr. DuChatelet (16:00.362)
cells that group together to form an organ. They have two kinds of controls, the mechanical control. You can have a kind of membrane that will cover the light organ allowing to shut down the light or you can also have some fiches that display muscles to rotate the light organ. Basically the light is emitted inside the specimen and so basically you don't have light emitted outside.
Clark
So with the mechanical control, they are always glowing on the inside or out, just like our listeners.
Dr. DuChatelet
but have also the physiological control and that's more my high topic so basically it's to understand all these organisms controlled by the light emissions and for most of the species they display a nervous control so basically you can find some nerves reaching the surroundings or the vicinity of the light organs and you have like the control of muscles for example you have a triggering by nervous influx could be depending on the species that could be with different neurotransmitters that can transmit the signal, OK, we need to trigger the light production or we need to inhibit the light production. There is only one exception to this kind of control is the sharks. The luminous sharks, they do not display any nerves reaching the light organs and they use an hormonal control. basically, hormones are moving through the bloodstream like melatonin, prolactin, etc. different hormones that reach the the the shark's light organ and trigger or inhibit the light emission of these sharks.
Clark (17:37.294)
Okay, if it's a response to a stimuli or connected to neurotransmitters and hormones, would you say that there is a level of conscious control?
Dr. DuChatelet
depending on the species again. So if you want to eat something, to find, to predate, it's conscience. If you need to answer to a mechanical stimuli because you are disturbed, it's maybe unconscious. But consciousness in organisms is complicated to define.
Clark
that might be a rabbit hole, we don't need to go down right now. However, one rabbit hole I would love to go down is that of color. I have many questions here. The first would be which colors do we see in marine bioluminescence and did the different colors indicate anything different?
Dr. DuChatelet
The thing is that that depends on the locations of the organisms. So if you look at all the organisms in the marine environment and you cluster them in the different depths, for example, you will see that basically the green emitters are mainly localized at the coastal area. If you reflect about the coastal water, the coastal water are more greenish than the oceanic water. And so they emit more green light. If you go to the oceanic water, you will find more species that emit blue light. That's the two best examples. Then you have a lot of exceptions. For example, I mentioned that I was working on worms. So that worm is called Tomopteris. Tomopteris is a yellow emitter. And we at the beginning don't know why these organisms emit yellow light. But if you reflect a little bit, that kind of yellow light is a kind of private channel. wow.
Dr. DuChatelet (19:19.0)
That's the only species in that environment. So basically I studied these species in fjords in Nordic fjords. That's the only species that emit light in a yellow color. That could be related also with the photoreception of the organisms living in the surroundings. Most of these organisms do not display the ability to see the yellow. So by emitting yellow light, they display at that time a private channel to communicate each other. You have also other organisms that emit red light. In the deep sea, they emit red light and they are the only ones that can emit this light. At that point, they light their environment in red and basically no other organisms can see this red light. So there they display a kind of way to see the environment that basically the other organisms don't see. They don't see that they are highlighted by a red emitter. So for predictions, it's a good way to predict.
Clark
Hmm. So this is sort of getting into the issue of visibility, which is also one of my questions having to do with color. When you were defining bioluminescence at the top of the show, you said that it was visible light. And I'm wondering, because I know that the colors of the rainbow are only the colors that humans can see with our naked eye and that there is a larger spectrum of photonic wavelengths and perceptible to us, you know, without fancy equipment, UV light, infrared light, et cetera. So I'm wondering if emitted light in the ocean could still be considered bioluminescence if it is still visible to other organisms but just not to us.
Dr. DuChatelet
So basically no, because it's clearly defined as the emission of visible light, in terms of visible spectrum for us human. The thing is that biolusins is clearly, and I saw your point coming, it's clearly you can entangle with the photoreception. So to be able to communicate is fine to emit light, but you need that the receiver of the signal can perceive the light you emit. That's clearly the case. So most of the organisms in the deep sea can see blue light.
Dr. DuChatelet (21:18.786)
That's cool because most of the Bionysans emitter are blue emitters, except some of them that make exception. So the thing is that we have a kind of duality between photoreception and Bionysans. That's one thing. The thing is that depending on the species, you can have some variation. So it was demonstrated a few years ago, for example, that some cephalopods that prey on deep sea fishes that are luminous, they use the luminous status of the prey to capture them. And so they display opsins that are molecules that allow you to perceive the light, but these opsins that are expressed in these cephalopods are more accurate than our opsin as humans. So they can see a palette of blue more larger than us. So they can discriminate between the blue light from the environment and the blue light from the prey. So depending on the species, you have some specificity in terms of photoreception.
Clark
Okay, this is interesting and it's connecting to an episode that we had air already about bioacoustics. Our guest was telling us that the field of bioacoustics involves both the sounds that are produced in the ocean and the sounds that organisms can perceive. So applying it to light, I guess there would be a lot of connection between studying bioluminescence and photoreception in this research space.
Dr. DuChatelet
So clearly, clearly they have an overlap between these two and I'm still in contact with collaborators working on that topic and I want to just add something that is really funny in terms of connection. Is that for example for my sharks, we discovered a few years ago that these sharks at the level of the light organ itself, they display photoreceptors. So in the scheme, not in the eyes. So they display extraocular photoreceptors. And these extraocular photoreceptors are amazing because the sharks will emit light, perceive at the level of the light organ the light emitted, and through the obscene they will regulate the light that they produce. It's like if you want if you put a bulb in front of a camera. The camera will capture the light of the bulb and the camera, if the light of the bulb is not accurate enough, will send a signal in feedback to regulate more finely and accurately the light produced by the bulb.
Dr. DuChatelet (23:32.792)
So they have a kind of auto-regulations through this photoreception, photo emission process coupling to regulate the light production.
Clark
Okay, this is the most fascinating thing. What are these sharks called? How can I Google them?
Dr. DuChatelet
It's called the velvet-bellied lantern shark. It's a species of lantern sharks. It's Latin name is complicated. It's ethnoptera spinax.
Clark
Is this the only bioluminescent shark or are there more kinds?
Dr. DuChatelet
Yeah, there are more. are in fact three families of sharks. So the Hethmopteridae, the Dalatidae and the Somnusidae. And that represents something like 43 species, if I remember well, of Hethmopteridae, 10 species of Dalatidae and only one species of Somnusidae.
Clark (24:16.782)
Okay, I have an appointment with Google Image right after this. I have one more question that I've written down about color before we move on. I'm very curious, are there some examples of organisms that can produce multiple different colors?
Dr. DuChatelet
Few examples. Yes. So I was talking before about the red light emitter. So that's basically a dragonfish that's displayed two types of organ. They have some kind of small organs displayed in the ventral side of the body, but they are also two large suborbital light organs. The ventral light organ emits blue light and the suborbital light organ emits red light. So that's one of the examples.
Clark
They use each different color for a different function?
Dr. DuChatelet
Suggested yes. That's again complicated to maintain dragonfishes in tanks and perform behavioral or ethological studies on them. So the idea n the suggested hypothesis is that the blue emission is for counter-illumination. We don't know if it's avoiding predations or to predate, to slowly approach without being seen by the the preys or to camouflage just to avoid predation, sorry. And the other type of light organ, so the red one, is assumed to be like a spotlight that's aligned the prey without being seen by the prey.
Clark (25:34.99)
Okay, that is fascinating. I am very satisfied. Rabbit hole complete. Moving on to the next one. I want to understand how we figured all of this out. So can you walk us through what methodologies you might use or any technologies that you can tell us about that might be able to sort of grasp how you would go about gaining such an understanding of bioluminescence?
Dr. DuChatelet
So I can speak about methodology that I use recently or during my studies and new technologies that I would love to use. So first thing is that working on physiology and evolution of luminous organisms, I want to say easily without the insisting that the organisms to be alive, meaning that we can use transcriptomic analysis and genomic analysis. We can use different assays, pharmacological assays, et cetera. playing with the different actors, molecular actors, thanks to protein expression for example. Then we have lot of in silico, so computer software that allow us to play with the sequence of the molecules and the proteins. So that's something that is quite easy, I want to say. That's not easy at all.
But more easy that the next part, so what I love, I would love to do is to have the ability to have kind of submarine ROVs to go towards the bottom of the oceans to really analyze and understand the ecology of these organisms and the function of the luminescence. So that's the technology that I would like to use is that kind of ROVs that allow us to go down there. So... Clearly with the increase of all these technologies, mean, omic technologies, also software and ROVs and a sensitive camera, we have more and more good device to, to apprehend and to understand and to make research on these organisms.
Clark (27:28.622)
Okay, this is leading us directly to the spirit of future research, which is something I always like to ask about. I read in your paper, you highlighted that there are major research gaps in the study of bioliminescence. So my question is, where do you think we should be putting our attention? Are there any burning research questions that you would have as a researcher or that you think the field needs to prioritize?
Dr. DuChatelet
So clearly in the review of all the marine archaic biolincense that I performed last year, I put forward the fact that we have a kind of knowledge on biolincense organisms with some organisms that are pointed as kind of supermodel. I mean, it's like in all other fields of research on organisms. Then we have some species that we have some gaps, but we know a little bit more. And then there are species that we just know that they can emit light.
And that's it, we don't know anything else. So if I want to point to a main gap that is interesting to feel, the first one is the molecule involved. So basically the system involved in the light emission, that is called the luciferin-luciferase system. We can talk about later to explain a little bit more. But that's really interesting. That's the target of Biome and Biomedical purposes. The second major, major gap, and it's more related to my sensitivity as a biologist and ecologist, is the non-understanding of these functions. Demonstration of this function, we have a lot of guessings. But for that, it's clear that we need to invest more. energy to demonstrate the behavior of these species, etc. And I want to say with the crisis of philosophy biodiversity, it's really important, I think, in my purpose, to really apprehend this ecosystem, the deep sea ecosystem. And it thinks that basically, bioluminescence as a communications tool can really explain all these interactions in this ecosystem and all these organisms in this ecosystem function. So that's for the first part.
Dr. DuChatelet (29:29.998)
In the term of biotechnology tools, so it's clear that Biolincense was used and is still used to discover in Biolincense as medical purposes. So basically Biolincense can be used for a marker, a biomarker. So that was used by the, in the past for detection of cancer cells, for example. So you can target the cells and make these cells emit light. So like that you can spot the cancer cells. Then we have all the new technology about environmental markers. So for example, you can also use biolessent tools to detect some pollutant in the water or pollutant in the soil. One example that I love to give to my students is the example of military purposes. So now we are developing new technology to be able to detect the mine that were buried in the... by using GMO bacteria that display a gene that can produce light. And these bacteria have a pecific affinity for some chemicals that will be released over time by the mine. And so basically you spread the land with the mine with these bacteria. And after a few hours, few days at night, you will see that the mine area will glow in the dark. And so you can find the mine.
Clark
So there's a lot of applications that maybe would not have seen so obvious to someone who was asking introductory questions about bioluminescence. And I think perhaps unpacking the biomedical applications today would be a little bit above my pay grade, but I just want to kind of take a moment to mention the importance of funding research that's not necessarily applied. So maybe to back up for listeners, applied research in science is that which sets out to solve a specific problem in contrast to fundamental research, which sort of just sets out to see what's out there. And this type of research is important and I make space for it on my shows most foundationally because I believe in sort of the philosophy of funding science just for the purpose of better understanding the universe that we live in. But building off of that, you never know how the light that coming off of sharks or creatures in the deep sea might have other uses for. We have the example today of cancer research until you find it. And I think that a lot of applied research or the research that people could argue is sort of more lucrative or applicable to
Clark (31:48.812)
developing or advancing humans comes from unexpected sources. So that's just my little comment on funding all types of different scientific research. But you did mention something about the specific molecule involved in bioluminescence. So I want to see if you want to circle back to exactly what is causing the light or where the light is coming from or what even is the light.
Dr. DuChatelet
So I will give you some generic name because that will be really complicated to answer into the details. But basically we have a substrate, so generally named the luciferin, that will react with oxygen under the action of a catalytic agent, an enzyme that is called the luciferase. So basically you have the luciferin that reacts with oxygen with the luciferase that will give you, at the end of the reaction, an oxyluciferin plus a carbon dioxide and light. So this reaction is a simple reaction. Obviously, luciferin is a generic name and you have different types of luciferin. You have also different types of luciferase. You can even have a kind of combination, a kind of big molecule, macromolecule that will cluster together the luciferin, the luciferase and the oxygen and they need a cofactor. So for example, an ion to react, to change the conformation of the protein, react and produce like. So that's the different way to produce, produce dislike. But the thing is that on top of that, you can have also a kind of associated molecule. So for example, the GFP and the GFP it's a kind of as Sturgeon Shinnay example in the Biolenssens world. So you have this reaction between the luciferin and the luciferase. You have a prediction of light and this light is decapped by the GFP. GFP means the Green Fluorescent Protea. I told you at the beginning of the talk that we have some difference between Biolenssens and fluorescence. So here we have a coupling between these two phenomena. So we have the Biolenssens first with the reaction. When the light is emitted, it's capped by the GFP.
Dr. DuChatelet (33:55.34)
green fluorescent protein that will transform the blue emission of the bio-instance in green emission thanks to the fluorescent protein. I told you about this example because, I will jump back to your idea of fundings, et cetera, you need to know that, for example, the GFP was discovered by a researchers that is called Shimomura. It's a Nobel prize of chemistry, actually. So he win the Nobel prize because he discovered the GFP.
And the GFP is now actually used in a lot of different applications in biomedicals again. So this guy was studying jellyfish just to understand fundamentally how this jellyfish is emitting light and he end by having a vulnerable price on chemistry.
Clark Marchese
See? Okay, I'm going to do another Google search about that Nobel Prize right after this as well. And as you were just speaking, I was reflecting on how interdisciplinary this topic is. There's obviously biology going on here, right? And there's definitely some chemistry. And I heard a little bit of physics all wrapped up there inside of one little glowing jellyfish or what have you. Well, I am conscious of time and I know you're very busy doing important work. So we will maybe start rounding out to the last couple of questions I have for you today. I think I know the answer to this one.
But I'm going to ask you anyway, what is your favorite species that displays bioluminescence? I'm going to guess it's got to be your sharks, right?
Dr. DuChatelet
My bioluminescent and sharks, obviously.
Clark (35:24.118)
I knew it. All right. Well then in that case, I'll ask you if there's anything that we didn't discuss today that you think we'd be kicking ourselves later if we forgot to mention about this topic or about marine research in general.
Dr. DuChatelet
I just want to say that a little bit going down in the sadness of the science is I study fundamental science and you mentioned that, so we need funding. And obviously at the basis we don't know what application could have or research or even have or research for human society. And so it's sometimes really complicated with that topic. That is fascinating. mean, glowing wonders of the deep sea is fascinating, but obtaining funding and. turning a permanent position to study that kind of topic is really really difficult. But that's amazing to see this species emitted light.
Clark Marchese
Yes. Well, I think one way to increase support for funding is to foster curiosity and knowledge about science. And that's a big part of what we're trying to do here. So I thank you for coming on the show today and for giving us your time. My last question is where can people find you and stay up to date with what you're working on?
Dr. DuChatelet
I don't have any website for instance but clearly the scientific world we have this research gate platform so you can find me by my name Laurent Duchâtelet. am also part of the marine biology lab in my university, the Université catholique of Louvain, so you can find me by looking for the lab and you will see a kind of overview of my research.
Clark (36:53.398)
Alright, well I will include all of that in the episode description as well as the publication that we discussed today. And this is the part where I say thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. Thank you for teaching us so many interesting things about bioluminescence and also for your very important research in this space.
Dr. DuChatelet
Thank you for the invitation.
Clark (37:31.032)
You have been listening to Oceanography. This is just a reminder to anyone who's interested in helping us reach more people, share scientific research like this, and continue making our shows, we would invite you to consider joining us on Patreon. That or a five star rating and written review wherever you're listening to this are the easiest and most effective ways that you can help us out. Oceanography is a Pine Forest Media production. You can find more information about this podcast and links to this week's guest in the episode description.
Cover art for the show was done by Jomiro Emming and the music you're listening to is done by Nila Ruiz. The show was hosted and edited by me, Clark Marchese, and you can find more information about Pine Forest Media and our other science podcasts on our website at pineforestpods.com or follow us on social media at pineforestmedia. All right, that's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for making it to the end and we'll talk soon.
