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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2010 Mar 1.
Published in final edited form as: Biochem J. 2009 Mar 1;418(2):261–275. doi: 10.1042/BJ20082055

Figure 2.

Figure 2

During exercise ATP is degraded to ADP. ADP in turn is in part reconverted to ATP and AMP via the adenylate kinase reaction. The AMP/ATP ratio is very sensitive to changes in high energy phosphates because the adenylate kinase reaction is in equilibrium. Thus, [ATP][AMP]/[ADP]2 = K and [ATP][AMP] = K × [ADP]2. If both sides of the latter equation are divided by [ATP]2 we get [AMP]/[ATP] ≈ ([ADP]/[ATP])2 indicating that the AMP/ATP ratio varies approximately as the square of the ADP/ATP ratio.