Nucleoside triphosphate

Nucleoside triphosphate (NTP) is a nucleoside with three phosphates. Natural nucleoside triphosphates include adenosine triphosphate (ATP), guanosine triphosphate (GTP), cytidine triphosphate (CTP), 5-methyluridine triphosphate (m⁵UTP), and uridine triphosphate (UTP). These terms refer to those nucleoside triphosphates that contain ribose. The nucleoside triphosphates containing deoxyribose take prefix deoxy- in their names (except for the thymidine derivative) and small d- in their abbreviations: deoxyadenosine triphosphate (dATP), deoxyguanosine triphosphate (dGTP), deoxycytidine triphosphate (dCTP), thymidine triphosphate (dTTP) and deoxyuridine triphosphate. Check the entry nucleoside for table and description of these compounds.

Apart from (d)ATP, (d)GTP, (d)CTP, (d)TTP and (d)UTP, there are other less abundant NTPs, such as intermediates of nucleotide metabolism, but also "rare" natural nucleotides or even artificial nucleotides. The rare NTP are tautomeric forms of the NTPs. They cause mismatched base pairing during DNA replication. For example, a tautomeric form of cytosine is capable of forming 3 h-bonds with adenine, and it will spontaneously revert to its original cytosine form, causing a mismatch. By a similar token, the deamination of cytosine leads to uracil, whereas a deamination of a commonly encountered (in eukaryotes) 5-methylcytosine will lead to thymine. However, the 5' to 3' DNA replication ensures that these mismatched bases are excised.

Nucleotide derivatives are of unparalleled importance for current natural life forms, as they are building blocks of nucleic acids and have thousands of other roles in cell metabolism and regulation. ATP is a major source of cellular energy. GTP is a very frequent cofactor of enzymes and proteins. NTPs generally provide energy and phosphate group for phosphorylations.

Generally nucleosides are nucleotides (e.g. adenine, guanine, cytosine...) that lack phosphates. However, for the sake of technical terminology, nucleotides are given classifications as nucleosides with a suffix describing the number of phosphates present in a specific unit. For example, if a nucleotide has one phosphate, it is a nucleoside monophosphate (NMP). If the nucleotide has two phosphates, then it is called a nucleoside diphosphate (NDP), and for three, it is a nucleoside triphosphate (NTP). The nucleotides that contain a ribose sugar are the monomers of RNA and those that contain a deoxyribose sugar compose DNA.

NTPs, NDPs and NMPs are ubiquitous in cell cytoplasm, nucleus and organelles. Given their multifarious functions, their levels are under fairly tight metabolic control. Most of the discussion on mutual ratios of nucleotides should belong under entry nucleotide, but concentrating strictly on the abundance of the triphosphorylated versions, we find that ATP spending is replenished by oxidative phosphorylation, while phosphorylation status of other nucleotides is regulated by NDP kinases (EC 2.7.4.6) and NMP kinases (EC 2.7.4.4) that use ATP pool as their cross-phosphorylation source.