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Nitrogen - Nitrogen is one of the six basic chemicals of life. Six chemicals - carbon (C), hydrogen (H), oxygen (O), nitrogen (N), sulfur (S) and phosphorus (P) - make up about 98 percent of the weight of people and trees. The way they are connected is what makes animals different from trees. When the 17-year-locusts emerge, they bring a lot of nitrogen to the soil surface. When they die, their bodies fertilize the soil. When nitrogen as nitrate ion, NO3-, or as ammonium ion, NH4+, enter a non-woody root, the first thing the nitrogen does is to bond with carbon from reserves to form amino acids. As a branch dies it moves its nitrogen based materials back thru the symplast, back into or towards the tree trunk. There is symplastic movement of Nitrogen. When a parenchyma cell is going to die there is symplastic movement of Nitrogen. It just doesn't keep all of its nitrogen based materials. As it dies it moves nitrogen based materials out to the younger cells. Why is this so very very important? Because wood decomposing organisms or any type of other organism cannot live without the nitrogen. Chlorophyll is a molecule that starts the energy trapping process. The molecule has magnesium [Mg] at its center with 4 nitrogen [N] atoms bonded to it.
See “Essential Element”, “Nitrate”, “Fertilizer” and “IRS”

See A TOUCH OF CHEMISTRY, SHIGO, 1996)