Flights of Fancy

                                   

                                                                      Flights of Fancy

         

    A warm, pleasant evening is falling upon the lawn. Uprising luminous fairies, each one flashing its message to the world,



and hopefully to others of its kind of the opposite gender; slowly drifting upwards and across the lawns with the breeze as the



evening light fades into night’s darkness. The children run after the floating lights to capture them, temporarily, in their glass jars



to watch the little flashing creatures climb about on the blades of grass inserted into the jars and blink its little message, “Here I



am, pick me”, to the others like them. The free flyers, floating among the night-lights from stars and porch lights alike flash



back, “Here I am, come find me”. The children, of all ages from one to100, gaze in wonder at the floating, rising, flashing lights



of the fireflies as the messages are blinked back and forth like insect Morse code.



         A Russian chemist and researcher, Natalia Nikolaevna Ugarova, states in the journal Nature Photonics, that “…chemical



reaction that produces the enchanting light that these insects are famous for — is useful not only for biological research but also



in photonics, where it serves as an ideal model of a photo-emitter system. In fact, it is one of the most intensively



studied bioluminescence systems and is now widely applied in biotechnology for gene-expression reporting, adenosine



triphosphate (ATP) sensing and DNA sequencing.” 



As if that explains the magic of the lights lifting from among the blades of lawn and rising towards the sky like angels heading



home after a long day of being guardians. Ugarova further explains that “Luciferase is a common bioluminescent enzyme found



in the firefly Photinus pyralis. It catalyzes the oxidation of firefly Luciferin in the presence of magnesium ions and adenosine-5’-



triphosphate. The product of this reaction, Oxyluciferin, is in a singlet electronically excited state and has been proved to be the



bioluminescent emitter of visible light.” I wonder if that is what attracts the amazed attention of the children around the world to



these Photinus pyralis as they emit their oxidized Luciferin in a bioluminescent blaze of natural light. Perhaps it is the result of



all of those chemical reactions that are the attention grabbers: insect lightning.



         I suppose that would explain the “Why and How” of the bug lights, but it does not explain the fascination these fairy lights



invoke among we children as the words from the poem “Ode to a Lightning Bug” by Susan Prospere so aptly says, “…over the



rose bushes, the lightning bugs open their topcoats to fly, and their hearts enamored with the night, light small temptations in



the minds of the children.” The colors of the night flying insect’s lights are a result of the sequence of the amino acid created



Luciferin, the chemical reaction of which is identical in all species of luminescent flies and beetles, and appears not to influence



the coloration of the illumination of the fairy-like insects (Ugarova, 8.)



         What child so fortunate as to view the flight of these enchanting lights has not exclaimed to their friends “Why, look!



Those insects are emitting a bioluminescent glow caused by the reaction of the enzyme luciferase catalyzing the oxidation of



Luciferin in the presence of Magnesium ions and adenosine-5-triphosphate which when combined creates Oxyluciferin which



has been proven to be the cause of the emission of the bioluminescent light!” (Ugarova, 8.) I prefer to think, as did Prospere in



the poem “Ode to a Lightning Bug”, that the fascination of holding a burning ember of insect in their hands without harming either



their hands or the insect was the actual attractant for the children, me included.



         Why, though, the different coloration of lights from the same kind of insects? Ugarova explained that by analyzing the



bioluminescent spectra {the light} using Gaussian curve fitting “…the whole spectra can be decomposed into three components



peaking at around…the first two peaks coincide with the well- known values of green-yellow and red bioluminescence maxima,



where-as the weak peak, at 670 nm was observed for the first time and…” (Ugarova 8) Blablablabla. Meanwhile the children



“who, in turn, move erratically over lawns, clasping captured lightning bugs in their hands…” (Prospere, 401), do not really care



why the colors are different, only that they are so. The fact that the light of the lightning bugs are caused by chemical reaction



and enzymatic action is important to science and researchers, who were children at one time as well, is evident in the many



years and dollars and people involved in the research.



         I wonder, though, if given the option  children would prefer to analyze the bioluminescent spectra using Gaussian curve



fitting and determine that the spectra is composed of three components ( Ugarova 8), or if they would prefer “ clasping captured



lightning bugs in their cupped hands until the night is filled with the lit cathedrals of the children’s hands” while one child, named



Amy, “luminous in her own light...wonders aloud if all plans are haphazard, because all of us imagine connections in our heads,



joining together these pinpoints of light, dot by dot, as we name constellations” ( Prospere 401.)  I, for one, prefer counting stars



and fireflies.                               





         





         



Works cited



Nikolaevna Ugarova, Natalia. "Bioluminescence: Fireflies Revisited." Nature Photonics 2.1 (2008): 8-9. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.

Prospere, Susan. American Scholar. Spring86, Vol. 55 Issue 3, p401. 2p, Database: Academic Search Complete. 15 March 2014