Abstract
During the past few years significant progress has been made in the use of bioluminescence and chemiluminescence in the research and clinical laboratories.There are several reasons for these developments.In the first place highly purified enzymes and chemicals have become commercially available at a reasonable price. Second, industry has developed and placed on the market inexpensive and highly sensitive photometers.Other reasons for the increased interest in luminescent systems include high specificity, speed of analysis and sensitivity, as low as 10-18 moles in some cases.
In the present article we will review briefly the use of the firefly system for measuring ATP and the luminescent bacterial for NADH and NADPH.Through the use of other enzymes and coupling reagents it is possible to assay several hundred enzyme systems and their corresponding substrates, although most of these have not been completely researched for clinical applications.
In the present paper we will not attempt a cmprehensive review of the literature. We refer the reader to a number of recent symposia and reviews on this subject1)-6).
