Is oxidative phosphorylation new?
Oxidative phosphorylation
The field of oxidative phosphorylation began with the report in 1906 by Arthur Harden of a vital role for phosphate in cellular fermentation, but initially only sugar phosphates were known to be involved. However, in the early 1940s, the link between the oxidation of sugars and the generation of ATP was firmly established by Herman Kalckar, confirming the central role of ATP in energy transfer that had been proposed by Fritz Albert Lipmann in 1941. Later, in 1949, Morris Friedkin and Albert L. Lehninger proved that the coenzyme NADH linked metabolic pathways such as the citric acid cycle and the synthesis of ATP. The term "oxidative phosphorylation" was coined by in 1939.
Phosphorylase kinase
When unmodified, the α and β subunits inhibit the enzyme's catalysis, but phosphorylation of both these subunits by protein kinase A (PKA, or cAMP-dependent protein kinase) reduces their respective inhibitory activities. The δ subunit is the ubiquitous eukaryotic protein calmodulin which itself has 4 calcium ion binding sites. When cytosolic Ca levels rise-to as low as 10 M—the δ subunit undergoes a large conformational change that activates the kinase's activity by binding to a complementary hydrophobic patch on the catalytic γ subunit.Phosphorylase kinase was the first protein kinase to be isolated and characterized in detail, accomplished first by Krebs, Graves and Fischer in the 1950s. At the time, the scientific community was largely unaware of the importance of protein phosphorylation in the regulation of cellular processes, and many in the field dismissed phosphoproteins as biologically unimportant. Since covalent modification by phosphorylation is a widespread, important method of biochemical regulation in a wide variety of cellular processes, the discovery of this reaction has had enormous impact on scientific understanding of regulatory mechanisms.