Relationships among purine nucleoside metabolism, adenosine triphosphate catabolism, and glycolysis in human erythrocytes.

In human erythrocytes incubated with both naturally occurring purine nucleosides and with a variety of purine nucleoside analogs, ATP catabolism was accelerated and lactate accumulation was increased. Tubercidin was a particularly potent inducer of ATP catabolism. In cells incubated with tubercidin, the major route of adenylate metabolism was deamination, whereas in cells incubated with deoxyglucose, the major pathway was dephosphorylation.