Ashlee Donaher reports that ATP – or Adenosine Triphosphate – is the primary energy carrier in all living organisms on earth. Microorganisms capture and store energy metabolized from food and light sources in the form of ATP. When the cell requires energy, ATP is broken down through hydrolysis. The high energy bond is broken and a phosphoryl group is removed. The energy released from this process is used to drive various cellular processes. ATP is constantly formed and broken down as it participates in biological reactions and it is central to the health and growth of all life. Without it, cells could not transfer energy from one location to another, making it impossible for organisms to grow and reproduce!
Because ATP is present in all living and active microbial cells, it is an excellent indicator of overall microbiological content in fluids or deposits. To measure it we turn to a well known example of bioluminescence; the tail of a firefly! Through a chemical reaction, ATP reacts with luciferase and light is produced. The amount of light can be quantified in a luminometer and the amount of ATP present can then be calculated. Because this reaction happens instantly, the amount of microbiological content can be quantified immediately.
Standard microbiological monitoring methods often require culturing microbes on media and waiting for them to reproduce and form visible colonies. It takes days or weeks to obtain results depending on the species, and these methods only capture <1% of the total population present. By measuring ATP regularly, and being able to differentiate between cellular ATP inside active microorganisms and dissolved ATP released from dead cells, cause & effect relationships can be identified helping you solve microbiological challenges before it’s too late.
Typical responses to microbiological “threats” (biocide treatments, chemical disinfectants, non-chemical disinfection, pasteurization, filtration, and so on) actually attack the total microbiological population. Therefore, ATP testing technology gives you the data you need to make informed decisions when it comes to microbiological threats in your system and allows you to confirm that your water management strategy is effective, all in the same shift.
For more on the equipment discussed (here). ATP was invoked for further research into uranium deposition in Campbell and Biddle (1977), p. 8.
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