Nucleoside triphosphate

A nucleoside triphosphate (NTP) is a molecule containing a nucleoside bound to three phosphates. Nucleotide
derivatives are necessary for life, as they are the building
blocks of nucleic acids and have thousands of other roles
in cell metabolism and regulation. NTPs generally provide energy and phosphate group for phosphorylations.

contain a ribose sugar are the monomers of RNA and

those that contain a deoxyribose sugar compose DNA.
NTPs, NDPs and NMPs are ubiquitous in the cell cytoplasm, nucleus and organelles. Given their multifarious
functions, their levels are under fairly tight metabolic control. Shifts in the ratio of available nucleotides can cause
shifts in their incorporation, which, if not corrected, can
lead to mutations. Most of the discussion on mutual ratios
of nucleotides should belong under entry nucleotide, but
concentrating strictly on the abundance of the triphosphorylated versions, we nd that ATP spending is replenished
by oxidative phosphorylation, while phosphorylation status of other nucleotides is regulated by NDP kinases (EC
2.7.4.6) and NMP kinases (EC 2.7.4.4) that use ATP pool
as their cross-phosphorylation source.

Natural nucleoside triphosphates include adenosine

triphosphate (ATP), guanosine triphosphate (GTP),
cytidine triphosphate (CTP), 5-methyluridine triphosphate (m5 UTP), and uridine triphosphate (UTP). ATP is
a major source of cellular energy. GTP is a very frequent
cofactor of enzymes and proteins.
The terms ATP, GTP, CTP, and UTP refer to those
nucleoside triphosphates that contain ribose. The nucleoside triphosphates containing deoxyribose are called
dNTPs, and take the prex deoxy- in their names and
small d- in their abbreviations: deoxyadenosine triphosphate (dATP), deoxyguanosine triphosphate (dGTP),
deoxycytidine triphosphate (dCTP), deoxythymidine
triphosphate (dTTP) and deoxyuridine triphosphate. The
dNTPs are the building blocks for DNA (they lose two of
the phosphate groups in the process of incorporation).

1 References
[1] http://www.newscientist.com/article/
dn13252-artificial-letters-added-to-lifes-alphabet.html

Apart from (d)ATP, (d)GTP, (d)CTP, (d)TTP and

(d)UTP, there are other less abundant NTPs, such as intermediates of nucleotide metabolism, but also rare natural nucleotides or even articial nucleotides.[1] An example of rare NTPs are the tautomeric forms of some
NTPs. They can cause mismatched base pairing during
DNA replication. For example, a tautomeric form of cytosine is capable of forming 3 hydrogen bonds with adenine, and it will spontaneously tautomerize to its original cytosine form, causing a mismatch. By a similar token, the deamination of cytosine leads to uracil, whereas a
deamination of a commonly encountered (in eukaryotes)
5-methylcytosine will lead to thymine. However, the 3'
to 5' exonuclease activity of DNA polymerase III ensures
that mismatched bases are excised during replication.
Generally nucleotides are nucleosides (a ribose/deoxyribose sugar covalently bonded to a nitrogenous base, such as adenine) that have 5' phosphate(s).
However, for the sake of technical terminology, nucleotides are given classications as nucleosides with a
sux describing the number of phosphates present in
a specic unit. For example, if a nucleotide has one
phosphate, it is a nucleoside monophosphate (NMP).
If the nucleotide has two phosphates, then it is called
a nucleoside diphosphate (NDP), and for three, it is a
nucleoside triphosphate (NTP). The nucleotides that

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