Adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, is the most widely used energy carrier in the cell (Alberts et al., 2002a). Cells build it as they break down food and spend it on the work of living.
Most of a cell’s ATP comes from the mitochondria, where using oxygen yields about fifteen times as much ATP as glycolysis alone (Alberts et al., 2002b).
In photobiomodulation research, ATP is one of the most common things measured. In lab studies it rises with light and then falls as the dose keeps climbing, one form of the biphasic dose response (Huang et al., 2011).
References
Alberts, B., Johnson, A., Lewis, J., Raff, M., Roberts, K., & Walter, P. (2002a). Catalysis and the use of energy by cells. In Molecular biology of the cell (4th ed.). Garland Science. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26838/
Alberts, B., Johnson, A., Lewis, J., Raff, M., Roberts, K., & Walter, P. (2002b). The mitochondrion. In Molecular biology of the cell (4th ed.). Garland Science. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26894/
Huang, Y.-Y., Sharma, S. K., Carroll, J., & Hamblin, M. R. (2011). Biphasic dose response in low level light therapy: An update. Dose-Response, 9(4), 602–618. https://doi.org/10.2203/dose-response.11-009.Hamblin