Independently, Cormier had been studying the luminescent system of the sea pansy Renilla reniformis, which
contains an easily dissociated luciferin–luciferase
system. After extraction from thousands of organisms,he obtained a small amount of the luciferin and, on the
basis of spectroscopic data and knowledge of its oxidation products, assigned it an imidazopyrazine structure
that was identical to the suggested structure for the chromophore from aequorin. The apparent widespread
occurrence of this imidazopyrazine in bioluminescent coelenterates led Shimomura to propose the name coelenterazine, and coelenteramide for its oxidized form