Recombinant Whole‐Cell Bioreporter Systems Based on Beetle Luciferases

Abstract

Bioluminescence is one of the most widely used reporter systems in living cells. Luciferase encoded by luc gene from the firefly Photinus pyralis is a commonly used reporter gene that can be detected by bioluminescence and utilized in the construction of bioreporters. In a classical bioreporter, the expression of a reporter gene is controlled by a natural regulatory circuit, which in many cases consists of a regulatory protein and its corresponding promoter. In the absence of analyte, the regulatory protein is either repressing the transcription initiation from the corresponding promoter or simply does not activate the transcription. However, when the analyte is present in the bioreporter cells, it binds with the regulatory protein, which initiates the transcription and thus, the expression of the reporter gene, the specificity of a bioreporter, is mostly defined by the regulatory unit. An overview is given on the possibilities and limitations of beetle luciferases in whole‐cell bioreporter systems and biosensors. Examples of the use of beetle luciferase‐based bacterial and yeast‐based bioreporter systems for the quantification of bioavailable heavy metals and organic compounds in environmental samples as well as for identifying endocrine disruptive compounds are given.