Andrew Huberman· PhD
Nitrogen is a element that can act as a base. So it can in a technical term can accept a proton. So it can also develop a charge. Charges are important because if you think about magnets, right, we have a positive charge magnet face and a negative charge magnet face. And those two things will attract each other. You can set them on a table and they'll find each other, right? Depending on how strong or close they are to each other. That's a very similar thing that happens between a nitrogen that can gain a positive charge in our body and say a caroxyic acid or a a negative charge that would be present on a protein. And so that nitrogen being charged, I always call it when I teach my pharmacy students, it's almost like a tractor beam. That molecules floating around and it it's trying to find that negative charge to interact with. And when it finds the right one in the right space, and the right fit, boom, it's into that protein and it causes whatever it's going to cause, whether it activates that protein or whether it blocks that protein from doing its function.