This question may be silly but Why cant animals consume ATP or Adenosine triphosphate directly instead of eating and having calories coveted into ATP? Like cant we theoretical produce ATP in a lab or something? Can we solve world hunger with this?
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There are a few reasons for this. For starters, the lifetime of ATP in the body is incredibly short; an individual molecule of ATP cycles between ATP and ADP approximately once per second. It is CONSTANTLY being broken down and built back up. I forget the exact numbers, but in my senior biochemistry class during my undergraduate, our professor told us there’s on the order of 20 grams of ATP in an average human, but the daily need is multiple kilograms. From this we can tell that consuming additional ATP won’t accomplish very much.
Instead, what we can do is consume something called creatine phosphate. Creatine have a higher. Phosphorylation potential than ATP does, which means when ATP is low creatine serves as a sort of ” phosphorylation reservoir” to help restore ATP levels. This is the primary reason why athletes consume the fitness supplement creatine, to boost stamina. In times of maximum exertion (think sprinting), we run out of ATP stores within just a few seconds (then glycogen kicks in). Having a buildup of creatine phosphate extends this amount of time
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