One of the characteristic features of many marine dinoflagellates is their bioluminescence, which lights up nighttime breaking waves or seawater sliced
by a ship’s prow. While the internal biochemistry of light production by these microorganisms is well established, the manner by which fluid shear or mechanical
forces trigger bioluminescence is still poorly understood.  In this seminar I will describe controlled measurements of the relation between
mechanical stress and light production at the single-cell level, using high-speed imaging of micropipette-held cells of the marine dinoflagellate 
Pyrocystis lunula subjected to localized fluid flows or direct indentation. We find a viscoelastic response in which light intensity depends on both
the amplitude and rate of deformation, consistent with the action of stretch-activated ion channels. A phenomenological model captures the experimental observations.