Gadsden County Times

What Makes Fireflies Shine?

Dr. William D. McElroy, Johns Hopkins biologist, is trying to find out what makes fireflies shine. And since he pays a quarter for every 100 living fireflies that are brought to him, the kids around Baltimore are kept busy capturing fireflies these days.

Last year youngsters turned in to him a total of about 500,000 fireflies. One young man, by apparently employing mass collection methods, accounted for 27,000 bugs alone.

It has been known for many years that fireflies need two substances to glow: luciferin and luciferase. The former is a compound that combines with oxygen, or burns, and the latter is a catalyst that speeds up the burning.

When luciferin and luciferase are combined there is a flash of light, which explains the firefly's glow but does not explain how the light goes on and off over and over again. In other words, there is something more than luciferin and luciferase at work.

Dr. McElroy has found out what happens, and it appears that the secret of the firefly is the secret of the source of every animal's energy. It should be remembered that plants transform the energy of the sunlight into chemical energy, and that animals eat the plants, storing up and making use of the chemical energy.

Dr. McElroy finds that the firefly stores up adenosine triphosphate (ATP for short). ATP is the source of energy we see as light, and without ATP there would be no light. ATP also explains why people are able to walk, talk, eat, and think.

And the doctor still needs 500,000 fireflies a year to continue his experiments, because every discovery raises new questions.

Perhaps his firefly experiments will answer the question of how the chemical energy of ATP is transformed when boy kisses girl.