Sympoium 1997: Abstract for F McCapra

Symposium 1997: Abstracts

Curiosity has its Rewards - An Outline of the Applications of Chemiluminescence.

Professor Frank McCapra
University of Sussex

Chemistry has always attracted those interested in attractive - preferably audible and visible - phenomena. The light emitted by living organisms such as the firefly and demonstrations of "cold light" has stimulated a desire to find out what mechanisms lay behind the light emission. These in turn have suggested practical applications. These started with alternatives to common analytical procedures for inorganic materials, but have recently been transformed in a most exciting way to embrace procedures as diverse as chromatography, immunoassay, DNA probes, DNA fingerprinting, reporter genes and a variety of detectable events of significance in wider areas of research such as medicine and the environment.