With the advent of chemiluminescence, sophisticated analytical procedures have become a accessible to the undergraduate researcher.
Chemiluminescence is the production of light, resulting from a chemical reaction.
These light photons can be captured by autoradiography for Northern, Western or Southern analysis. Because many of these instruments were not originally designed to detect light emissions they must be modified or reprogrammed for these assays. The scintillation counter, which normally detects radioactivity, can be reprogrammed for single photon counts or be modified by disabling the coincidence circuit. Thus, the standardization of these techniques must also now assess the compatibility of the modified scientific equipment. Chemiluminescent reporter plasmids have been created which encode proteins that will react with substrates to produce a light emmission.