Electricity amd ATP

[rinaik]

Hi all,

 

Is there an extracellular reaction that can convert electric energy into chemical energy stored in ATP ?

I know the reverse process occurs in electric eels. I am trying to develop a biomimetic electric device.

 

Thank you,

 

R

[BurningKrome]

So, the chemical energy stored in ATP is really completely different than electrical energy (for functional puposes).

 

Electrical energy is the result of electrons moving through a substrate (copper wire, silicon/germanium chips) to carete force...often in the form of light, heat, or a magnetic field (craeting a magnetic field is how electric motor operate).

 

ATP energy really is used by depositing one of it's phosphates onto a protein, which then has a conformational change, which can then drive things like Kinesin Motor proteins (see

) In the animation, ADP (ATP minus one phosphate) is attached to one of the "heads"...which causes it to bind to the microtubule. When an ATP molecule attaches to it, it causes a conformational change (the yellow part) which twists the second head (with ADP bound) to move forward and attach to the strand. Then a phosphate on the first ATP (attached to the first head) disassociates, causing the first head to unbind. When an ATP attaches to the second head, IT has a conformational change which drags the first head around...and the process continues causing the Kinesin to "walk" down the mircotubule.

 

However, if you;re trying to come up with something for a science fiction novel...you could, potentially, device something to strip electrons off the phosphates, leaving an ionized phosphate waste. Of course, it would pretty much take every ATP molecule in your body to create enough current to run an LED for about half a second. Also, ATP does not float around in the blood. It's locked inside cells.

[Mr Skeptic]

Maybe, but energy isn't really stored as ATP, it will be used up as quickly as possible. ATP is an unstable molecule and will quickly decay.

[BurningKrome]

From the science fiction perspective...if the purpose is to convert the body's energy sources into electrical/mechanical energy, it would be better to devise a muscular motor. I.e. similar to an electrical stepping motor, except that instead of using pulses of electro-magnetism to initiate each step, it would use muscular contraction for each step. Kind of a ratcheting motion. Cloned sphincter muscles should provide the ideal motion. http://en.wikipedia..../Stepping_motor

 

Then, instead of using ATP directly, you would simply need to tap the blood supply from the human host to feed the muscular portion of the cybernetic device. If the desire is to use the body's energy to create an electrical source exclusively (instead of doing mechanical work like spinning...say...an arm mounted mini chain gun ;-) then the muscular rotary motor could be attached to a small alternator.

 

 

Actually, I wonder if the London Cybernetics institute is working on something like this. If I worked for them, I would be ;-D

[pioneer]

ATP is the mini-me of O2 or oxygen. Both accept electron density rather than give up electrons like carbon-hydrogen compounds. In a very loose sense, ATP is sort of analogous to the positive pole of a battery, pulling electron density. When the muscles use ATP, motion is added to stored electron density to create sort of a local current.