REGULATING ATP TURNOVER RATES OVER BROAD DYNAMIC WORK RANGES IN SKELETAL-MUSCLES

It has long been appreciated that rates of ATP utilization and production need to be extremely closely balanced. To put it in molecular rather than molar terms, in human muscle engaged in a 15-min work protocol, approximately 3.3 x 10(20) ATP/g are used and resynthesized at approximately 100 times the resting cycling rates before fatigue, during which time only a 20-25% decrease in the ATP pool is sustained. Analysis of how such remarkable regulatory precision is achieved suggests that in resting muscle myosin behaves as a latent catalyst whose full catalytic potential 1) is realized with the arrival of an activator signal (Ca2+) and 2) is tempered with reaction products; such proactive control, initiated at ATP utilization, sets the required flux through ATP-producing pathways. For any given enzyme step in ATP-producing pathways, reaction velocity (v) becomes the independent parameter, with substrate concentration ([S], the dependent parameter) being adjusted accordingly. Because the dynamic range for muscles (change from resting to maximum ATP turnover rates) can exceed 100-fold, in many studies of working muscle the percent change in ATP turnover rate exceeds (sometimes by very large margins) the percent change in [S]. These observations are not easily explained by current metabolic regulation models but are consistent with pathway enzymes behaving as latent catalysts in resting muscle. In this view, the unmasking of such latent catalytic potential is the main explanation for how large changes in v can be achieved with modest (sometimes immeasurable) changes in [S]. In terms of the basic enzyme velocity equation, V(max) = k(cat)e(o) (where V(max) is maximal reaction velocity, k(cat) is the turnover number per active site, and e. is the concentration of active enzyme), for pathways of ATP utilization and of ATP synthesis, the dominant (coarse level) regulation is achieved through e(o) adjustments, whereas fine tuning of flux is achieved by substrate, product, or modulator-mediated kinetic adjustments.