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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1975 Jun;72(6):2088–2090. doi: 10.1073/pnas.72.6.2088

Atomic structure of intracellular amorphous calcium phosphate deposits.

F Betts, N C Blumenthal, A S Posner, G L Becker, A L Lehninger
PMCID: PMC432700  PMID: 1056015

Abstract

The radial distribution function calculated from x-ray diffraction of mineralized cytoplasmic structures isolated from the hepatopancreas of the blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) is very similar to that previously found for synthetic amorphous calcium phosphate. Both types of mineral apparently have only short-range atomic order, represented as a neutral ion cluster of about 10 A in longest dimension, whose probable composition is expressed by the formula Ca9(PO4)6. The minor differences observed are attributed to the presence in the biological mineral of significant amounts of Mg-2+ and ATP. Synthetic amorphous calcium phosphate in contact with a solution containing an amount of ATP equivalent to that of the biological mineral failed to undergo conversion to the thermodynamically more stable hydroxyapatite. The amorphous calcium phosphate of the cytoplasmic mineral granules is similarly stable, and does not undergo conversion to hydroxyapatite, presumably owing to the presence of ATP and Mg-2+, known in inhibitors of the conversion process. The physiological implications of mineral deposits consisting of stabilized calcium phosphate ion clusters are discussed.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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