Creation of artificial luciferases to expand their analytical potential.

Bioluminescent proteins have been intensively used as high sensitive reporters in all kinds of binding assays (immuno-, nucleic acid hybridization assays, etc.) and in bioimaging. But natural luciferases do not always meet the requirements set for them as the assay reporters: thermostabitity, definite bioluminescence spectral and kinetics characteristics, stability to chemical modifications, etc. Luciferases with different appropriate characteristics as well as various luciferin derivatives were obtained using mutagenesis and chemical synthesis. Thanks to rigorous efforts of many researchers bioluminescencebased analytical techniques offer a great potential for solving analytical tasks in the field of biotechnology, biomedicine, pharmacology, etc.