Light & Life

The kids of atomic Oak Ridge, Tenn. (which swarms with children) were busy this week on a new enterprise: collecting fireflies for Dr. Bernard L. Strehler of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Dr. Strehler wants 100,000 lightning bugs and will pay 25-c- a 100 for living, healthy specimens.

When Dr. Strehler finally gets his fireflies collected, they will not be allowed to sparkle for long. He intends to detach their luminous posteriors and extract from them luciferin--a substance which fascinates many scientists.

Luciferin (an enzyme or organic catalyst) is responsible for the firefly's strange cold, yellow-green light. Not much is known about its complex chemistry but Dr. Strehler points out an extraordinary fact. The light that comes from luciferin has been analyzed spectroscopically and turns out to be very similar to the fluorescent glow given off by riboflavin (vitamin B2) when it is irradiated with invisible ultraviolet.

Riboflavin, in turn, is believed to be vitally mixed up with the absorption of light by both plants and animals. It is present in the retinas of human and animal eyes and often in parts of growing plants that turn toward light. Luciferin may bear a relationship to the generation of light similar to the relationship that riboflavin bears to the absorption of light. If this is proved to be true, biochemistry will have made a long step toward understanding life itself, since life's basic energy comes from light.

The rear ends of Dr. Strehler's martyred fireflies may serve another purpose too. One of the chief concerns of the Oak Ridge laboratory is radiation sickness, the damage that atomic-age radiation (mostly gamma rays) does to living tissues. This damage is not mere "burning"; it is chiefly due to subtle chemical changes produced within the cells. When chemists have a better understanding of the relation of light to life, they stand a better chance of protecting atomic-age humans against gamma rays, which are "ultra-high-frequency light."

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