ENERGY CURRENCY OF THE CELL

Adenosine triphosphate is one of the monomeric units of DNA/RNA strand which is a biopolymer.It is nucleotide made up of pentose sugar (ribose in RNA, deoxy ribose in DNA),adenine (nitrogen base) and three phosphates.  Adenine is attached to the pentose sugar through N9-C1 glycosidic linkage, the pentose sugar in turn attaches to phosphates through ester linkages at C5. ATP was discovered in 1929 by Karl Lohmann.

It provides energy by its hydrolysis to drive many of the processes in the living cell. ATP is often referred as “energy currency of the cell”. 1 ATP gives 7.3Kcal of energy. It is also used as coenzyme. ATP is also a substrate of adenylate cyclase, most commonly in G protein-coupled receptor signal transduction pathways and is transformed to second messenger, cyclic AMP. Aminoacyl-trna synthetase enzymes consume ATP in the attachment trna to amino acids, forming aminoacyl-trna complexes during translation(protein synthesis).  ATP binds metal cations with high affinity. Due to the strength of the ATP-Mg2+ interaction, ATP exists in the cell mostly as a complex with Mg2+ bonded to the phosphate oxygen centers. The presence of Mg2+ regulates kinase activity.

ATP is produced by a number of cellular processes like beta oxidation of fattyacids, oxidation of glucose (glycolysis, TCA pathway) solely gives 30ATP. ATP is produced in the thylakoid membrane of chloroplast during photosynthesis.

Regards,

Editorial Assistant,

Journal of Biochemistry and Physiology.

Biochemistry@molecularbiol.com