eli5: How does the body store power
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The main way is by phosphoryl bond energy. there are certain molecules with unstable, high-energy chemical bonds that are used as energy “currency”. When the bond is broken, it releases energy. You can spend this currency to get power to do stuff. Eating sugar, burning fat, burning carbs, burning amino acids… this all can generate energy currency to spend later. Our bodies have evolved tons of enzymes that act as machines that couple two things at once: accept energy currency, and perform some chemical reaction or function. Ex. Muscles accept this currency and break the phosphoryl bond, using the energy released to move. Enzymes accept this currency to catalyze difficult reactions.
The most common energy currency is called ATP. It’s basically just a ribonucleotide “handle” that is an artifact of the RNA world. It’s sole job is to carry this high-energy phosphoryl bond, and to be recognizable for binding purposes. This molecule is nice because it’s reactive, not too unstable (so it won’t fall apart before it’s spent). Sort of a ‘goldilocks’ molecule.
Both substrate-level phosphorylation and oxidative phosphorylation store energy as ATP within that phosphoryl-anhydride bond.
Electron Bifurcation is the other method of energy conservation, which conserves redox energy directly as chemical potential on a stored electron… but that’s light years beyond eli5
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