ABSTRACT
Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is the most important high-energy phosphate compound in living organisms because it is the primary energy carrier in living cells. Organisms use both chemical energy as well as light energy to synthesize ATP. The free energy of the high-energy phosphate bonds on ATP is most commonly used to drive biosynthetic reactions and other aspects of cell function through carefully regulated processes. The application of microtitration techniques to the ATP-TOX System may further increase replicate numbers of each exposure, thus increasing the reproducibility. This may reduce the minimal time required to finish a batch test. This is very significant when large numbers of environmental samples are to be screened in a short period of time. For some toxicants, growth inhibition was their main mode of action, but for others, such as sodium lauryl sulfate, the total inhibition was primarily the result of inhibition on luciferase activity.
