I know little biology, too. I can check back with the person who told me that-- the way I understood it was that there are slightly different versions of ATP, some of which are more efficient, but all of which work.
The WP article doesn't mention anything of the kind, and when I studied freshman biochemistry nothing like that was mentioned, either. OTOH there's a lot of variations in the (vastly bigger, more complex and more diverse and numerous) organic molecules that work with ATP.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=marijuana-reveals-memory-mechanism
I wonder what the implications are for brain preservation and whole brain emulation? If glial cells are important, then saving and emulating the neurons alone probably won't be enough.