I'm not a microbiologist, but I am a chemist who has taken more than a few biology and biochemistry courses. I can try to shed some small light on your questions, maybe the size of a small LED flashlight.
First off, amino acids are not sugars. As the name suggests they are acidic. In organic compounds an acidic functional group comes at the end of a carbon chain, and consists of an oxygen atom double-bonded to the terminal carbon and an hydroxyl group (OH) single bonded to it. Sugars consist of all hydrogen, or hydroxyl functional groups
Amino acids aren't proteins either, but they are used to build proteins and enzymes and such.
Life as we know it cannot exist without amino acids. Of course, the key is 'as we know it'. The challenge will be being able to identify life as we don't know it. Someone mentioned a St:TNG quote, and I know what the quote is (ugly bags of mostly water) That episode is a fine example of not recognizing life as we don't know it.
That being said, there is a quality called electronegativity associated with each element. Comparing the electronegativity difference between 2 atoms across a bond gives a vector quantity of length equal to the difference. If you add all the vectors together for a molecule you will either get a net value, or they will all cancel each other out. If there is a net value, that liquid is called a polar substance. If they cancel each other out, it's call non-polar. For life as we know it to exist, it has to be in a polar substance. Liquid methane is non-polar, thus, for life to exist based on liquid methane in place of water in our system, that would be life as we do not know it.
The very acidic and basic solutions of sulfuric acid or ammonia would play interesting tricks on the base molecules. Life in such circumstances would have had to make some interesting adaptations.
In science fiction I've read about may different base molecules for life, from nickel to viri. And of course robotic life forms would tend to 'consume' raw metals, rubber, epoxies and silicons.
Humans don't 'burn' sugars for energy. Humans use what's called the ADP-ATP cycle. To store energy the body converts adenosine di-phosphate (ADP) to Adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP) and we recover stored energy by converting ATP back to ADP. Of carbohydrates, fats and proteins, carbs do provide much of the driving force for this.
And, the Matric notwithstanding, but raising humans for energy is HORRIBLY inefficient. This argument is already being made for cows, pointing out that the food energy the cow consumes os more than 100 times the food energy of a grown cow. A robotic species would get much more efficient energy via the same types of renewable resources that we are beginning to explore now, especially solar, and hydrogen fuel cells.
But in terms of the game, the races basis for life is more bound by imagination, than real science. We simply do not know enough yet to imagine all the possibilities.
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