Evidence is provided that the amplifiers luminol and lucigenin react with different reactive oxygen species (ROS), depending on the ROS-generating system used. H2O2 is used to produce calibration curves for luminol- and lucigenin-amplified chemiluminescence. With this chemiluminescence generator we characterized the specificity and sensitivity of luminol- and lucigenin-amplified chemiluminescence and also studied penicillin G, a known enhancer of luminol-amplified chemiluminescence. The combination of luminol and lucigenin in reciprocally changing concentrations is effective in an additive manner, but the weak amplifier penicillin increases luminol-amplified chemiluminescence distinctly more than in an additive manner in different combinations. Lucigenin-amplified chemiluminescence is increased by penicillin at about 1% of the optimum concentration of penicillin; increasing concentrations of penicillin are less and less effective. On the other hand, low lucigenin concentrations enhance penicillin-amplified chemiluminescence at optimum penicillin concentrations more than in an additive manner. Fe2+ does not alter luminol-, lucigenin- or penicillin-amplified chemiluminescence. Co2+ increases luminol-amplified chemiluminescence by a factor of 100. Lucigenin- and penicillin-amplified chemiluminescence are minimally enhanced by Co2+. Cu2+ enhances luminol-amplified chemiluminescence with increasing concentrations by a factor of 1000. Lucigenin-amplified chemiluminescence increases also by the factor of 1000, but the concentration-reaction curve is not as steep. NaOCl enhances H2O2/Fe(2+)-driven luminol-amplified chemiluminescence in a concentration-dependent manner by a factor of 10(4) (in the highest concentration of 10 mmol/L) and lucigenin amplified chemiluminescence only by a factor of about 25. Catalase (CAT) abolishes luminol-, lucigenin- and penicillin-amplified chemiluminescence completely, whereas superoxide dismutase (SOD) has no effect on luminol- or penicillin-amplified chemiluminescence, but enhances lucigenin-amplified chemiluminescence five-fold increasingly with increasing SOD activity.