ATP - The facts

This is the energy 'currency' of your body and released controlled amounts of energry. To release this energy it knocks of one  of the three phosphate groups on the moecule to release about 30.6Kj of energy and the products are ADP and pi ( inorganic phosphorus) Can you believe that 2 Million of these molecules are used in active muscle cells per second! 

So how come we don't run out of this stuff?

well just like plastic bottles  we 'recycle' these molecules the ADP + pi and 30.6KJ( this reaction is called phoporalation) can go the other way and create the ATP again and water + ATP can go through a hydroysis reaction to form the ADP+pi and 30.6KJ energy

for this reaction to happen and cataylst is needed , in this case it is an enzyme ATPase and to get it back you use the ATPsythase

• it is quick to be synthesisedas it only requires one enzyme to complete compared to the 72 needed to deal with glucose!
• it is universal and  can be used to in many reactions and is used by all living organisms 
• the energy is released in small aounts which means that the body can cope with it glucose produces 2870KJ which is too much in one go compare this to 30.6KJ

So what do we use this energy for?

• Protein synthesis
• Nerve impluse transmission
• Muscle contractions
• Active transport

of course there are more but these are the ones that we  need to be familiar with

There are two types 

Photophosphoralation- this occurs in photosynthsis

Oxidativ phosphoralation - part of the electron transfer chain