Cytosolic NAD content strictly depends on ATP concentration in isolated liver cells

By focusing on the question of the thermodynamic relationships involved in the regulation of biological energy conversion, bioenergetic studies usually consider the free pyridine and adenine nucleotide rather than their total pools, in either cytosol or mitochondria. In this study, we report a new observation that, at steady state, nicotinamide nucleotide content is increased by a rise in the ATP content of the whole cell under physiological conditions. It is a straight line relationship when only NAD⁺ and ATP are considered. When regarding the compartmentation of this phenomenon, it appears that the linear relationship between [NAD⁺] and [ATP] occurs only in the cytosol. Such a dependence could be a supplementary mechanism of regulation between various metabolic pathways in the liver cell.