Inhibiting Firefly Bioluminescence by Chalcones

Chalcone refers to an aromatic ketone and an enone that constitutes the central core for various important biological compounds in drug discovery. Moreover, the firefly luciferase (Fluc) as the bioluminescent reporter has been widely used in life science research and high-throughput screening (HTS). However, Fluc might suffer from direct inhibition by HTS compounds resulting in the occurrence of “false positives.” In the current research, we discovered a series of chalcone compounds as Fluc inhibitors with favorable potency both in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, our compound 3i showed remarkable systemic inhibition in transgenic mice. Both enzymatic kinetics study and cocrystal structure demonstrated that compound 3i is competitive for substrate aminoluciferin, while noncompetitive for ATP. Besides, compound 3i exhibited excellent selectivity as a promising quenching agent in a simulated dual-luciferase reporter assay. We believed that our research would contribute to improving scientists’ awareness of the Fluc inhibitors, pay attention to the bias results, and even expand the utilization of bioluminescence in life science research.