The Hakubi Project

We convert energy that is originally stored in various sources (e.g. oil, wind, light, and radio isotopes) into electric power, in order to make them usable. Living organisms employ the same strategy, by taking up sugar, fatty acid, etc as energy sources. Then, the energy within the uptaken energy sources is converted into a form of adenosine 5’-triphosphate (ATP) before being used in a number of chemical reactions inside cells. ATP is indispensable and is one of the most important molecules for living organisms. When muscles contract and the brain thinks, ATP is required. Formerly, it was generally thought that ATP contents inside cells are constant. However, it has recently been recognized that ATP acts not only as energy inside cells, but also as a signal transmitter inside and outside of cells. This means that ATP contents should change. It has been quite unclear, however, how ATP distributes and changes inside living organisms. In this Hakubi seminar, I will overview the roles of ATP before introducing recent research, including a technique to visualize ATP contents inside living cells that I developed recently.