- High-energy phosphate
High-energy phosphate can mean one of two things:
* The phosphate-phosphate bonds formed when compounds such as
adenosine diphosphate andadenosine triphosphate are created.* The compounds that contain these bonds, which include the nucleoside diphosphates and nucleoside triphosphates, and the high-energy storage compounds of the muscle, the
phosphagen s. When people speak of a high-energy phosphate pool, they speak of the total concentration of these compounds with these high-energy bonds.High-energy phosphate bonds are
pyrophosphate bonds, acidanhydride linkages, formed by takingphosphoric acid derivatives and dehydrating them. As a consequence, thehydrolysis of these bonds is exothermic under physiological conditions, releasing energy.Energy released by high energy phosphate reactions Reaction ΔG [kJ/mol] ATP + H2O → ADP + Pi -36.8 ADP + H2O → AMP + Pi -36.0 ATP + H2O → AMP + PPi -40.6 PPi → 2 Pi -31.8 AMP + H2O → A + Pi -12.6 Except for PPi → 2 Pi, these reactions are, in general, not allowed to go uncontrolled in the human cell but are instead coupled to other processes needing energy to drive them to completion. Thus, high-energy phosphate reactions can:
* provide energy to cellular processes, allowing them to run;
* couple processes to a particular nucleoside, allowing for regulatory control of the process;
* drive the reaction "to the right", by taking a reversible process and making it irreversible.The one exception is of value because it allows a single hydrolysis, ATP + 2H2O → AMP + PPi, to effectively supply the energy of hydrolysis of two high-energy bonds, with the hydrolysis of PPi being allowed to go to completion in a separate reaction. The AMP is regenerated to ATP in two steps, with the equilibrium reaction ATP + AMP ↔ 2ADP, followed by regeneration of ATP by the usual means,
oxidative phosphorylation or other energy-producing pathways such asglycolysis .Often, high-energy phosphate bonds are denoted by the character '~'. In this notation, ATP becomes A-P~P~P.
References
* McGilvery, R. W. and Goldstein, G., "Biochemistry - A Functional Approach", W. B. Saunders and Co, 1979, 345-351.
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