Branched polyphosphates can be stable after all

Abstract

Polyphosphates are found in living organisms in both linear and cyclic forms. They are thought to act as storage molecules and phosphate donors. Since the 1950s, researchers have thought that branched polyphosphates—also called ultraphosphates—are too unstable to survive in cells’ aqueous environments. But Henning J. Jessen of the University of Freiburg and his coworkers thought that ultraphosphates, especially ones without cyclic substructures, must also be present in cells. “If all these structures are known, ultraphosphates should also be there,” he says. Because Jessen and his colleagues couldn’t find ultraphosphates in biological systems, they focused on the chemistry instead ( Nat. Commun. 2021, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-25668-3 ). “We wanted to figure out what would be conditions we could see them at all,” he says. “If you treat them the wrong way, they hydrolyze very quickly. We’re able to figure out under which conditions they are kind of stable, so we think there