Notes ¹

Noctiluca scintillans, commonly known as the Sea Sparkle, and also published as Noctiluca miliaris, is a free-living non-parasitic marine-dwelling species of dinoflagellate that exhibits bioluminescence, when disturbed. The bioluminescent characteristic of N. scintillans is produced by a luciferin-luciferase reaction that takes place in thousands of spherically shaped organelles, called scintillons, located throughout the cytoplasm of this single-celled protist. Nonluminescent populations within the genus Noctiluca lack these scintillons.

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1. Adapted by GTMResearchReserve from a work by (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctiluca

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