A history of bioluminescence and chemiluminescence from ancient times to the present

In recent years Bioluminescence (BL) and Chemiluminescence (CL) have become fundamental tools in molecular biology and related sciences, and bioanalytical chemistry has benefitting from implementation of new highly sensitive analytical methodology based on BL and CL. An overview of the ancient period will be reported starting with primitive understanding of natural phenomena of light emission from BL terrestrial and marine animals and fungi. At that time BL was just described as a fascinating unexplained natural phenomenon and was limited to terms of magic and superstition. In the course of the Centuries , paralleling the development in other scientific fields, methodological study of BL and CL began in the 1400s, with subsequent gradual advancement until nearly experimental growth in our fund of knowledge in the last century and half or so. From the background of scientists from natural sciences and with the advent of the modern chemistry, the mechanisms of light emission from firefly, marine animals was fully defined only in the early 1900s taking advance of the first experiments of the late 1800s. The term CL was just introduced in late 1800s and many new CL molecules were synthesised also following the structure of the natural BL substrate luciferin. The BL and CL based methods are present in many applied field of analytical chemistry from amplified coupled enzymatic reaction, immunoassay, nucleic acidc based assay, in vivo molecular imaging, cell based biosensors and in general molecular biology techniques.