1.

INTRODUCTION

Bioluminescence, the phenomenon of a living thing generating light, is common in nature and
makes it more vibrant. The firefly is the most common live bioluminescent creature and may be
found all over the planet (Ando et al, 2008). Firefly bioluminescence has a wide range of
applications, primarily as an analytical tool, because to its high quantum yield and signal-to-
noise ratio. The chemical interaction that causes fireflies to emit bioluminescent light is well-
known, and it has gotten a lot of attention from the scientific community, both empirically and
through the use of theoretical methodologies (Dothager et al, 2009).

Organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) research has exploded in recent years due to its enormous
promise in flat panel displays, next-generation and flexible displays, and low-power lighting
sources (G.M. Farinola et al, 2011).

With various luciferases, multicolor light from green (530 nm) to red (635 nm) is released when
the excited state of the keto anionic oxyluciferin, the firefly bioluminescence emitter, decays to
the ground state. veral changes to luciferin or oxyluciferin have been developed to control the
hue of firefly bioluminescence throughout the last decade [17–28]. Previous research has found
that the emission wavelengths of oxyluciferin derivatives are substantially influenced by their
molecular configurations.

Simple modifications in the substituent group can cause the wavelength to vary. By replacing the
benzothiazole moiety with a simpler aromatic structure and inserting one or two double bonds,
the emission wavelength of oxyluciferin derivatives can be shifted from blue to the near-infrared
window area (Iwano et al, ). Mofford et al, studied cyclic amino derivatives wich is red-shifted
wavelength to near-infrared region . Jathoul et al, synthesized a dual-color far-red to near-
infrared firefly luciferin analogue.

The influence of the double bond and F group on the electronic structure and optical properties
of a series of firefly oxyluciferin analogues is investigated using quantum chemistry methods.
According to the calculations, inserting a double bond raises the energy of HOMO and EA
values while decreasing the energy of LUMO and IP values, hence improving hole and electron
injection ability. The F group substituent lowers the energy of LUMO and raises EA values,
which increases electron injection ability. More importantly, in the gas phase, emission
wavelengths vary from 459 to 640 nm (Chun-Gangmin et al,2016).

The firefly's luciferin/luciferase system has been used to monitor biological processes using
bioluminescent imaging. Some efforts have been made to tune the light emission, particularly the
effort to obtain NIR light, in order to improve the efficiency and increase the application range.
Those particular studies, however, have not revealed the nature and method of color tuning as a
whole. The current systematical modifications of both oxyluciferin and luciferase reveal that the
charge distribution (or electric dipole moment) on the oxyluciferin has an impact on charge
transfer to form the light emitter and, as a result, influences the strength and wavelength of the
emission light. A red shift occurs when more negative charge is distributed on the thiazolone
moiety" of oxyluciferin or its analogues (Yuan-Yuan Cheng et al, 2018).
2. DISCUSSION