Is there a way to make Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) at home?

[Marzfisch]

Hello, this is my second post on this forum, so bare with me.

 

I am working on a new project, and I need to make a concentrated liquid containing ATP. I don't have access to a laboratory, or chemicals.

 

Would this be most easily achieved by fermenting sugar with bacteria? If I fermented a sugar mixture with Lactobacillus Acidophilus it would convert the sugar into citric acid and ATP, correct?

 

I want to try and make ATP organicly. If anyone can help me with this I would be delighted!

[Elite Engineer]

You sound like me in my sophmore year of college. I wanted to try and synthesize, EVERYTHING!

 

In any case, using L. Acidophillus bacteria with sugar would not make ATP for you. The bacteria would use the sugars to make ATP for itself (internally), and it would only release the by products such as carbon dioxide, methane etc.

 

Synthesis of ATP in living organisms in very complex, and uses multiple enzymes with many reactants (pyruvate, acetyl-COA, etc.) that you won't find at home. If you want to synthesize it at home with a beaker, and heat you would need all pure reactants (i.e. 99% adenosine, 99% triphosphate). I don't know of any specific reactions to make it, but I'm sure you could find some. Some labs I believe use cow heart cells with an artificial proton gradient to make ATP. It's funny, because I was just working with ATP the other day with actin filaments. It's nothing special..just a white crystalline powder.

 

~EE

Edited October 17, 2016 by Elite Engineer

[BabcockHall]

To the best of my knowledge, the chemical synthesis of ATP was first achieved in 1949 by Alexander Todd. I have synthesized a few phosphoanhydrides here and there, and it is generally not easy.

[Elite Engineer]

To the best of my knowledge, the chemical synthesis of ATP was first achieved in 1949 by Alexander Todd. I have synthesized a few phosphoanhydrides here and there, and it is generally not easy.

how do you facilitate the ester linkage between the adenosine and triphoshpate, without getting a 50% or less yield..while not using enzymes.

[John Cuthber]

how do you facilitate the ester linkage between the adenosine and triphoshpate, without getting a 50% or less yield..while not using enzymes.

It's entirely possible that you don't.

[BabcockHall]

One of the linkages I made was in GDP, and my starting materials were GMP, activated as the morpholidate and O-17 labeled P_i. I think Moffatt was one of the first people to use this technique. My recollection is that yields in making phosphoanhydrides are not uncommonly in the range of 50%. In the case of ATP, I would probably start with AMP and PP_i.

[Elite Engineer]

It's entirely possible that you don't.

But how can you assure you're going to get at least 50% of that specific product? I would think you'd get variations of ATP with the triphosphate bonding to the 2 or 3 carbon positions. What about mono, di and triphosphates reacting with each other as well. IMO, just seems like the ideal ATP product would be less than 50% without using enzymes.