How was ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate) originally isolated?

Answer 1

Rumours say that ATP was discovered by the German chemist Karl Lohmann in 1929. However, there is controvenrsy on the issue, as Fiske and Subbarow had already published the first isolation of phosphocreatine and ATP from voluntary muscle a few months earlier (see the original work here: http://www.jbc.org/cgi/reprint/81/3/629)

Its structure was clarified some years later and in 1948 the Scottish Nobel laureate of 1957 Alexander Todd synthesised ATP chemically. An important role was that played by the 1953 Nobel laureate in Medicine Fritz Lipmann when he during the years 1939-41 showed that ATP is the universal carrier of chemical energy in the cell and coined the expression "energy-rich phosphate bonds".

ATP functions as a carrier of energy in all living organisms from bacteria and fungi to plants and animals including humans. ATP captures the chemical energy released by the combustion of nutrients and transfers it to reactions that require energy, e.g. the building up of cell components, muscle contraction, transmission of nerve messages and many other functions. ATP has been termed the cell's energy currency.

Answer 2

There is a good deal of information about ATP on the web, because the 1997 Nobel prize for Chemistry was awarded to 3 biochemists for the study of ATP. A good site to view is one from Oxford University: http://www.3dchem.com/molecules.asp?ID=91