Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is one of the most important nucleotides present in living organisms because it stores and delivers energy from the metabolizing of food. Without ATP, for example, humans would be unable to use their muscles because it serves as the source of energy for their movement.

The compound ATP was discovered by Fritz Lipmann, a German-American biochemist at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. In 1937 Lipmann had discovered, almost by accident, that phosphates were somehow important to the metabolic process. He was uncertain exactly what role they played, but believed it had something to do with the delivery of energy to the body's cells. In 1941, he finally found answers to some of the questions he had been asking. He found a molecule that released a low-energy phosphate--adenosine monophosphate--and discovered that, during the course of carbohydrate metabolism, the molecule picked up two energy-rich...