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Biochemistry · Small molecule

ATP 3D Structure

The cell's energy currency: adenine and a ribose sugar carrying a chain of three phosphates; splitting off the last one with water releases energy.

Almost every energy-using process in a cell, from muscle contraction to pumping ions and building proteins, is paid for with ATP. The cell makes it mostly in mitochondria, by ATP synthase, and spends it within seconds by removing the last phosphate, leaving ADP. It is also one of the four building blocks of RNA.

Also called Adenosine triphosphate or Adenosine 5′-triphosphate.

ATP as balls and sticks: the flat double ring of adenine, a five-membered ribose ring, and a chain of three phosphate groups, phosphorus in orange and oxygen in red.
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A base, a sugar and three phosphates

ATP is a nucleotide: adenine, the sugar ribose, and a chain of three phosphates. PubChem's model, shown here, is uncharged; in the cell the phosphates carry about four negative charges between them, and ATP usually travels with a magnesium ion bound to them.

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View 1 of 6: A base, a sugar and three phosphates

Download the pictureDownload the atoms (SDF)Checked against its sources on 25 October 2026.

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The ATP structure, explained

  1. 01A base, a sugar and three phosphates

    ATP is a nucleotide: adenine, the sugar ribose, and a chain of three phosphates. PubChem's model, shown here, is uncharged; in the cell the phosphates carry about four negative charges between them, and ATP usually travels with a magnesium ion bound to them.

  2. 02Adenine

    The flat double ring is adenine. The carriers NAD⁺, FAD and coenzyme A each contain the same adenine nucleotide, an AMP unit that the cell adds from ATP when it makes them.

  3. 03Ribose

    Adenine is joined to carbon 1 of ribose; the phosphates to carbon 5. With its two hydroxyl groups at carbons 2 and 3, ribose is the sugar of RNA, not DNA.

  4. 04Three phosphates in a row

    The phosphates are named alpha, beta and gamma, outwards from the sugar. Their negative charges repel each other, and the products of splitting them apart with water are more stable, which is why that reaction releases energy, even though breaking a bond on its own takes energy.

  5. 05Spending the last phosphate

    Removing the gamma phosphate turns ATP into ADP and phosphate, releasing about 30.5 kilojoules per mole under standard conditions and more in the cell. Removing two phosphates at once gives AMP and pyrophosphate, used to drive reactions that need an extra push.

  6. 06Made and spent all day

    A cell holds only a few seconds' to minutes' worth of ATP, so it is rebuilt from ADP continuously, mostly by ATP synthase in mitochondria. A person turns over roughly their own body weight of ATP in a day.

Parts

What each part does

Adenine
A purine base: two joined rings of carbon and nitrogen with an amino group. The same base pairs with thymine in DNA and with uracil in RNA.
Ribose
A five-carbon sugar in a five-membered ring. Adenine joined to ribose is adenosine; the phosphates hang from the sugar's fifth carbon.
Alpha phosphate
The first phosphate, joined to the ribose. When ATP is built into RNA, the alpha phosphate is the one that stays, in the backbone.
Beta phosphate
The middle phosphate, joined to the alpha and gamma phosphates by phosphoanhydride bonds.
Gamma phosphate
The last phosphate. Breaking its bond to the beta phosphate, by hydrolysis or by handing it to another molecule, is how ATP pays for work.

The structure

Where these atoms come from

Compound
PubChem CID 5957
Formula
C₁₀H₁₆N₅O₁₃P₃
Molar mass
507.18 g/mol
Atoms shown
47, hydrogens included
IUPAC name
[[(2R,3S,4R,5R)-5-(6-aminopurin-9-yl)-3,4-dihydroxyoxolan-2-yl]methoxy-hydroxyphosphoryl] phosphono hydrogen phosphate
InChIKey
ZKHQWZAMYRWXGA-KQYNXXCUSA-N

Coordinates from PubChem's computed 3D model, in the public domain. The model is one low-energy shape of the molecule; in water it flexes and turns about its single bonds.

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Sources

Where the facts come from

Written by biofideX from these sources. Drawn with 3Dmol.js (Rego and Koes, Bioinformatics 2015).

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