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Originally Posted by johnep  Amino groups are common perhaps because these compds were original building blocks. After all DNA is made up of amino acids.
johnep |
A lot of drugs mimic the natural transmitters in the body, a lot of them block receptors. Some are reversible, some irreversible. Most of this means that the compound must have nearly the right overall shape and/or charge pattern to interact with a specific receptor. This is borne out by the difference in activity between the (l) and (d) (R & S) stereoisomers. Can't think of any transmitters that don't have nitrogen in there somewhere?
Read somewhere that nitrogen in the form of nitrous oxide (?) was probably the 'primeaval transmitter'.
For a computer analogy, its like storing passwords. If the checksum of the password is stored, another word that gives the same checksum can act as a password.
Hope that helps you along a bit.
Damn, you've gone and overloaded my brain now.