title: Structural distinctions of fast and slow bacterial luciferases revealed by phylogenetic analysis.
abstract: Bacterial luciferases are heterodimeric enzymes that catalyze a chemical reaction, so called bioluminescence, which causes light emission in bacteria. Bioluminescence is vastly used as a reporter system in research tools and commercial developments. However, the details of the mechanisms that stabilize and transform the reaction intermediates as well as differences in the enzymatic kinetics amongst different bacterial luciferases remain to be elucidated.
  
  
  
  Amino acid sequences alignments for 21 bacterial luciferases (both α- and β-subunits) were analyzed. For α-subunit, containing the enzyme active center, 48 polymorphic amino acid positions were identified. According to them, the sequences fell into two distinct groups known as slow and fast based on the decay rate of the bioluminescence reaction. The differences in the enzyme active site induced by structural polymorphism are analyzed.
  
  
  
  Three-dimensional models of Photobacterium leiognathi luciferase and Vibrio harveyi luciferase (with reconstructed mobile loop) are freely available at PMDB database: PM0080525 and PM0080526, respectively.
  
  
  
  adeeva@sfu-kras.ruSupplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Bioluminescent Biotechnologies, Siberian Federal University, Krasnoyarsk, Russian Federation.
authors.forename: Anna A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Deeva
authors.affiliation: Mechanism of Cell Genome Functioning Laboratory, Institute of Cell Biophysics RAS, Moscow Region, Pushchino, Russian Federation.
authors.forename: Evgenia A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Temlyakova
authors.affiliation: Mechanism of Cell Genome Functioning Laboratory, Institute of Cell Biophysics RAS, Moscow Region, Pushchino, Russian Federation Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Dolgoprudny, Russian Federation.
authors.forename: Anatoly A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Sorokin
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Bioluminescent Biotechnologies, Siberian Federal University, Krasnoyarsk, Russian Federation Laboratory of Photobiology, Institute of Biophysics SB RAS, Krasnoyarsk, Russian Federation.
authors.forename: Elena V
authors.initials: EV
authors.lastname: Nemtseva
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Bioluminescent Biotechnologies, Siberian Federal University, Krasnoyarsk, Russian Federation Laboratory of Photobiology, Institute of Biophysics SB RAS, Krasnoyarsk, Russian Federation.
authors.forename: Valentina A
authors.initials: VA
authors.lastname: Kratasyuk
mesh_terms: D007700:Kinetics; D049453:Luciferases, Bacterial / Q000737:chemistry; D008958:Models, Molecular; D010776:Photobacterium / Q000201:enzymology; D010802:Phylogeny; D014733:Vibrio / Q000201:enzymology
chemical_list: D049453:Luciferases, Bacterial