|
12th International Symposium on Bioluminescence & Chemiluminescence |
Symposium abstracts:
Czyz, Agata1, Plata, Konrad2, Zielke, Ryszard2, Wegrzyn, Grzegorz2
1. Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics,
Polish Academy of Sciences affiliated with the University of Gdańsk, Kladki
24, 80-822 Gdańsk, Poland
Email: czyz@biotech.univ.gda.pl
2. Department of Molecular Biology, University of Gdańsk, Kladki 24, 80-822 Gdańsk, Poland
Based on our experimental data we proposed a hypothesis that light emitted by Vibrio harveyi cells can stimulate DNA repair by activation of an enzyme photolyase. In such a case DNA repair by photoreactivation in bacterial cells could be independent of a sun light as an external source of light. Although these experiments are convincing they concerned only one species – Vibrio harveyi. To verify whether our model concerns other luminescent bacteria we performed experiments with Vibrio fischeri, Photobacterium leiognathi and Photobacterium phosphoreum. We observed the influence of the DNA damage factors on the level of light emission by each examined strain. This confirms our hypothesis about participation of light generated by bacterial cells in repair of DNA damages caused by external agents. It is interesting that although UV irradiation increase light emission of the cells of all four species, the chemical mutagens (e.g. sodium azide, NPD, ICR191, benzo-pyrene) do not cause an increase in luminescence of V. harveyi cells. It seems possible that this difference arises from the fact that V. harveyi is a free-living bacterium whereas V. fischeri, P. phosphoreum and P. leiognathi are symbionts living in light organs of squids, fish and molluscs, respectively. Therefore the symbiotic bacteria may live in habitats significantly richer in metabolits, and thus chemical in mutagens, than free -living V. harveyi.
This
is a preprint of an article accepted for publication in Luminescence: Copyright
2001 John
Wiley & Sons, Ltd (Wiley website)