Luciferase is the main ingredient that puts the Lightning in the bugs. Interestingly, at my last gig, luciferase was the key to their main business. They produced testing kits and supplies to verify hygiene of surfaces used in food production. Unlike the dirty chickens in a different thread where pathogens are the focus of attention, verifying that a surface is biologically clean is harder to do.
The way their product worked is like this: take a sterile swab and wipe it on the surface you wish to test. This could be any part of a food preparation surface, machinery, anywhere. Take that swab and insert it into the instrument produced by the company and press a button. The reading on the instrument would then reveal whether or not there were any biological contamination on the swab, and by extension, on the surface tested. This was done ingeniously by noting that luciferase lights up when in the presence of
ATP, adenosine triphospate, the fuel for cells.
Should the swab, spiked with luciferase, be combined with ATP, light would be emitted. The instrument detects this emission and thereby indicates the presence of ATP, which implies that the surface in question has *NOT* been cleaned completely. This is good to know, since we all want food prepared on, by and with surfaces and equipment that is sterile. This is a good way to know.
Because, of course, you can't see the biological contamination, any more than you could see the gross splashies from that chicken. By the way, the company also produced test kits for the detection of specific pathogens, e. coli, salmonella, etc.
Lightning bugs are cool!!