552 



KINETICS OF BIOLUMINESCENT REACTION. II 



mation as to relative luciferin concentrations, but does effect the 

 production of differences in them with all other factors held constant. 

 The procedure adopted was the rather simple one of increasing 

 the temperature of one sample of a luciferin solution, to hasten the 

 secondary reaction, while its originally identical companion was 

 held at a lower temperature. In the experiment shown in Fig. 6 

 one solution, giving curve B, was raised to a temperature of 55° for 

 3 minutes, and then cooled to the same temperature as its companion 

 tube. Simultaneous records of the two solutions were then made. 

 This method avoids any error due either to pigment changes or to 

 pH fluctuations, or to any other unknown and uncontrolled factor 

 which may have entered in to distort the previous results. The 

 records thus obtained are so closely parallel as to admit of no other 



TABLE V. 



Ideniiy in Values for k Obtained with Luciferin Solutions in Which the Concentra- 

 tion in One Solution Has Been Diminished by the Secondary Reaction 

 through Heating or Standing. 



interpretation but that luciferin concentration does effect only the 

 value of the ^'-intercept, and not the value of k, according to the 

 theoretical expectation. I have tabulated the values of k for five 

 such experiments in Table V. 



While I have been unable to obtain such records from solutions 

 in which the relative luciferin concentrations are accurately known 

 in advance there is every reason to believe that, since the two plot- 

 tings are parallel, in accord with expectation, the relative concen- 

 trations may also be arrived at from the data. For if A in equation (2) 



A I . . 



becomes — , then at zero time, /must become — , since k is constant; 

 2 2 



A I 



and if A becomes — , then / becomes — , and so on. So if, as in Fig. 6, 

 4 4 



