Question

Why is ATP regarded as the currency of the living cell?​

Answer 1

Answer:ATP is regarded as the currency of the living cell because,(ATP:aedenosyne tryposphate)functions as the energy currency for cell. it allows the the cell to store energy and transport in within the cells, to support endergonic chemical reactions.

Answer 2

Answer:

ATP functions as the energy currency for cells. It allows the cell to store energy briefly and transport it within the cell to support endergonic chemical reactions. The structure of ATP is that of an RNA nucleotide with three phosphates attached.

There are many different molecules such as CTP, UTP, GTP, creatine phosphate etc. are energy currency molecules. But why ATP is preferred over other energy currencies? Creatine phosphate can give higher energy (-10 Kcal/mole) than ATP (-7.3 Kcal/mole). Still, the cell prefers to use ATP or GTP over other.

There are different explanations to the fact:

Let us see the reaction of hydrolysis of ATP.

ATP+H2O→ADP+Pi

Energy: -7.3 Kcal/mole.

Pi has no energy to form back into ATP. The reason behind this is the strong electrostatic repulsion between ADP and Pi. Charge on ADP is 3 − and on Pi is 2 − .

The second reason is the resonance stabilization of Pi. There are four possible resonating structures of inorganic phosphate molecule due to the presence of oxygen atoms. This stabilizes the phosphate molecule liberated after the hydrolysis of the ATP.

The last reason is that inorganic phosphate has a high degree of hydration (i.e. hydrophilic molecule) and hence binds to water and stabilizes itself. Thus, the hydrolysis of ATP won’t reverse back and one of the reason why ATP is used as high energy currency.

ATP is known as adenosine triphosphate, and it is a molecule containing carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus. ATP is the energy currency of the cell because, it is the most preferred energy molecule in the cell. Its preference is due to the following factors:

1. It donates its phosphoryl groups to release energy.

2. On hydrolysis, it releases a high negative Gibbs free energy which can be used to drive many important biosynthetic reactions in metabolic pathways.

3. The presence of adenine and ribosyl groups provide additional features for attachment to enzymes so it is able to regulate enzymatic activities.

that's why ATP is regarded as the energy currency of the living cell.