Chemiluminometric techniques in clinical chemistry

Luminescent phenomena are widespread in nature and found in glow worms, luminous fish, and bacteria, when metabolic energy is partly converted to cold light, and in plants. Most of these phenomena can be explained by chemiluminescence. Chemiluminescence is characteristic for a variety of organic compounds oxidizable by H2O2. In those chemiluminescence reactions light is produced by oxidation of an aromatic compound (usually luminol or lucigenin) in the presence of H2O2 by a peroxidase. Bioluminescence, a subset of chemiluminescence, may be classified in four different forms: pyridine nucleotide linked in bacteria occurring with coupling of a redox and luciferase reaction; adenine nucleotide linked in fireflies in which oxygen, ATP and luciferin react under the influence of luciferase; furthermore enzyme substrate linked and photoprotein linked bioluminometric processes are observed in arthropods and in jelly fish.