Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

drhunny t1_j9r8cyy wrote

I am not a biologist, so take my answer with a grain of salt. I wouldn't respond except that your post is getting stale and I don't see anyone addressing the core question. Mods feel free to Dunning-Krueger my comment into oblivion if somebody else gives a more cogent answer to OP.

The question of "can" is easy to answer: Given funding, we can find some biological molecule that fluoresces at any wavelength you want between about 350nm and a few thousand nm. (human sight is about 400 - 700nm) Below about 350 is hard because it takes a lot of energy to generate.

The question of evolutionary fitness is more interesting. Evolutionary adaptation does not "seek new solutions". Rather, some random adaptation is evolved, and if it is advantageous it has a chance to become widespread. The advantage of bioluminescence is beyond my training, but I assume (perhaps wrongly) that it provides some competitive advantage in hunting/attracting mates/whatever.

Two factors are worth considering now:

  1. How likely is it that an organism mutate to produce a bioluminescent protein at wavelength "X".

  2. How advantageous / disadvantageous is that mutation?

To point (1) it is likely that some luminescent proteins are just one or two mutations away from some other protein that is common. These mutations are likely to occur more frequently than others, and are therefore more likely to catch hold if there is some competitive advantage to bioluminescence.

To point (2) if a luminescent protein is easy to achieve by mutation but is very energy intensive or poisonous or whatever, it is less likely to produce a net competitive advantage.

In some population, if two different mutations can occur, one being a low-cost protein at wavelength "X" and the other being a high-cost protein at wavelength "Y" I would expect the former to take hold in the population. And once the capability to luminesce at wavelength "X" is evolved, it becomes much less likely that a capability to luminesce at wavelength "Y" subsequently evolve. The organism already has a means of luring food/attracting mates/whatever. A mutation that produces another (more costly) method is a competitive disadvantage in most scenarios, unless there's a "Red Queen" situation where the organism is under a lot of pressure to evolve new capabilities due to competing evolution of a predator or similar.

Why blue-green for aquatic and red-yellow for terrestrial? The attenuation of light in sea water is wavelength dependent. Blue-Green propagates better than red or blue. That color is called "Aqua" for a reason. UV is rapidly attenuated. Presumably, then, a mutation for bioluminescence in the UV or IR provides little or no benefit. For terrestrial, red and infrared propagate just fine through air and are less energy-costly than blue or green. I have no idea if there's a lot of infrared bioluminescence, but I wouldn't be surprised.

2

Aximi1l OP t1_j9rhpyv wrote

Thanks for the non bio take. Heard that Bio is applied Chem which is applied Physics (least on the smallish scale).

Was overall curious if we would ever replicate bioluminescence proteins to make something multi color.

There are chromatophore cells (especially for Cephalopods) that can do a variety of colors as well.

1