Energy

11Opportunities in the Living Lights: Special Reference to Bioluminescent Fungi

Pramod Kumar Mahish¹, Nagendra Kumar Chandrawanshi², Shriram Kunjam³, and S.K. Jadhav²

¹ Department of Biotechnology, Govt. Digvijay Autonomous P.G. College Rajnandgaon (C.G.), Rajnandgaon, Chhattisgarh, India

² School of Studies in Biotechnology, Pt. Ravishankar Shukla University Raipur (C.G.), Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India

³ Department of Botany, Govt. V. Y. T. Autonomous P.G. College Durg (C.G.), Durg, Chhattisgarh, India

11.1 Introduction

Life on earth is so diverse. Bioluminescent organisms are present ubiquitously in the world. It comprises anglerfish in the deepness, and the outside flashing dinoflagellates can be seen. The diversity of bioluminescent organisms is so interesting because many mushrooms are self glowing, but plants cannot; similarly in animals, various fishes and insects are luminescent but frog, spiders, birds and mammals cannot (Wilson and Hastings 2013). Bioluminescence is a beautiful natural occurrence that stimulates the imagination of people and increases the curiosity of the scientific world to explore it more. Bioluminescence provides a certain advantage to the living organisms for their survival in an ecological context, like visual communication, attack prey, etc. (Fleiss and Sarkisyan 2019). Bioluminescent organisms are mainly found in the ocean. These organisms are dispersed in 16 major phyla and nearly about 700 genera (Waldenmaier et al. 2012).

Bioluminescence is ...