2,3-bisphosphoglyceric acid

Alright kiddo, so you know how our bodies need energy to do stuff like run and jump? And you also know that we get energy from the food we eat, right? Now, when we eat food, it goes into our body and gets broken down into little pieces that our body can use for energy. One of the things that gets made is called 2,3-bisphosphoglyceric acid, or 2,3-BPG for short.

2,3-BPG is a tiny little molecule that helps our body store and use energy. It's kind of like a battery that our body can use when it needs a quick burst of energy. It's also really important for our red blood cells, which are the cells in our body that carry oxygen.

You see, our red blood cells have a protein called hemoglobin on them, and hemoglobin is what carries the oxygen from our lungs to the rest of our body. And guess what? 2,3-BPG helps hemoglobin do its job better! It kind of helps the oxygen stick to the hemoglobin, so that our red blood cells can carry more oxygen around.

So there you have it, 2,3-BPG is a little molecule that helps our body store and use energy, and also helps our red blood cells carry more oxygen around. Pretty cool, huh?