Use of a special Brazilian red-light emitting railroad worm Luciferase in bioassays of NEK7 protein Kinase and Creatine Kinase

Background Luciferases, enzymes that catalyze bioluminescent reactions in different organisms, have been extensively used for bioanalytical purposes. The most well studied bioluminescent system is that of firefly and other beetles, which depends on a luciferase, a benzothiazolic luciferin and ATP, and it is being widely used as a bioanalytical reagent to quantify ATP. Protein kinases are proteins that modify other proteins by transferring phosphate groups from a nucleoside triphosphate, usually ATP. Methods Here, we used a red-light emitting luciferase from Phrixotrix hirtus railroad worm to determine the activity of kinases in a coupled assay, based on luminescence that is generated when luciferase is in the presence of its substrate, the luciferin, and ATP. Results In this work we used, after several optimization reactions, creatine kinase isoforms as well as NEK7 protein kinase in the absence or presence of ATP analogous inhibitors to validate this new luminescence method. Conclusion With this new approach we validated a luminescence method to quantify kinase activity, with different substrates and inhibition screening tests, using a novel red-light emitting luciferase as a reporter enzyme. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12858-017-0087-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.