Is the relationship between the plasma concentration of inorganic phosphate and the rate of oxygen consumption of significance in regulating energy metabolism in mammals?

Regulation of the energy metabolism in mammals ultimately depends on regulatory processes at the cellular level, which include a regulation of the oxidative phosphorylation in mitochondria. Although knowledge about the mechanisms of oxidative phosphorylation in isolated mitochondria has been rapidly increasing, our understanding of the regulation of energy metabolism at the cellular level is still only at its beginning, and, as stated already in 1947 [12], our concepts of the regulation of energy metabolism in the animal kingdom, as well as in human pathology, have hardly left the descriptive state. A review of the literature on the regulation of cellular and mitochondrial oxygen uptake as related to the level of extracellular inorganic phosphate, however, leads to the suggestion that the concentration of plasma Pi may well be essential for the regulation of energy metabolism in the animal kingdom as well as in humans in different clinical situations.