Consistency in nucleic acids
At the moment we use ATP (adenosine triphosphate) as general energy currency, and NA (nucleic acids) as a substrate for transcription and DNA replication. This needs revision because we're not consistent here:
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We generate ADP from NA (lumped species) so we implicitly assume NA is only nucleic acids (purine or pyrimidine).
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On the other hand, in transcription and DNA replication we use NA as a direct substrate and therefore assume it to be NTPs!
We need to either generalise ATP to NTP what would be challenging for energy consuming reactions since we would overestimate the available energy (metabolic enzymes only use ATP?!), or we take into consideration the energy needed for the conversion of NA to NTP for transcription and DNA replication. In the latter case we need to carefully revise the purine and pyrimidine biosynthesis but this solution seems to be more legit.
A smart and short introduction in the pathway can be found in this video
We should discuss this soon.