ATP synthase is described as a rotary molecular turbine embedded in the mitochondria that converts a proton gradient into chemical energy. Protons flow through the protein much like water through a dam, and that flow turns a ratcheting wheel that attaches a phosphate group to ADP, producing ATP. The mechanism, called rotational catalysis, was worked out experimentally and earned its discoverer a share of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
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The hosts note that a UCLA biochemistry building is named after the scientist who worked out this mechanism, though the name itself is not stated in the transcript.
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ATP is called the energy currency of the cell, generated this way to power reactions like the phosphorylation discussed earlier in the episode.
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1:31:20to party, from protein to protein to make the proteins go from one state to another state. We had already discussed phosphorilation earlier and how this adding of a phosphate group makes the proteins go from one state to another. Well, how do you get those phosphate groups in the first place? the mitochondria creates it using um ATP synthes. And for a long time, we didn't really know how it worked. It turns out it's a literal ratchet. >> Okay? It's a literal turbine. The same way that we've got a dam, and the dam turns a wheel, and the wheel creates energy. Over here, we've got a dam. The dam instead of being water is um hydrogen ions. Just a bunch of protons that are sandwiched in between the
1:32:00mitochondria. There's a little turbine that lets the protons through and because all the protons want to get away from each other, right? Because they're all positively charged, right? There's a massive flux of protons and they they can do a lot of work. And as the protons flow through, there's a ratchet that turns a wheel on the protein and that wheel turning takes a phosphate and a ADP, a diphosphate >> and sticks another phosphate in >> Y >> and sticks another phosphate in. And it's just this absolutely beautiful mechanism um that we're definitely going to cover in a in another episode because it's probably my favorite protein of all time is ATP synthes. He discovered that rotational catalysis it won him the 1997
1:32:42Nobel Prize in chemistry and when I was at um UCLA the the um the main biochemistry building is named after named after him. >> Yeah. Hall >> uh denisine triphosphate the fiat >> of our energy system 1993 to 2000 discovery and universal conservation of micro RNA. >> Yes, this was Victor Ambrose and Gary RVkun at Harvard and MIT uh sorry Massachusetts General Hospital. I'm not going to give MIT more credit than it